West Roxbury Sermons 

By 

Theodore Parker 

1837-1848 

From Unpublished Manuscripts 

With Introduction and 
Biographical Sketch 




Boston 
American Unitarian Association 



Copyright, 1892, 
By F. B. Sanborn. 



f « » * « * « * f ' . 

* ; • • 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



Pag" 

Introduction v 

Biographical Sketch xvii 

I. The Parable of the Talents 1 

IT. Spiritual Indifference 15 

III. Tranquillity 30 

IV. The World belongs to Each Man ... 45 
V. The Influence of Eeligion upon the 

Feelings 58 

VI. The Application of Eeligion to Life . 72 

VII. A Sermon of Man 89 

VIII. The Fact of Life and the Idea of Life 105 

IX. The Crucifixion . 119 

X. Christian Advancement 130 

XI. Prayer and Intercourse with God . . 145 

XII. Christianity in Contact with Heathen- 

ism r~~. . . i6i 

XIII. Low Aims and Lofty 178 

XIV. God's Income to Man 197 

XV. The Doctrine of Inspiration 216 



INTRODUCTION. 



ONE of the tests of a great preacher is his power 
to get and hold the ear of the community or of 
the age in which he lives. He may do it by studying 
the arts of popularity, or, like the great preachers and 
prophets of every age, he may do it when the e-ars of 
men are closed against him. Neither in his presenta- 
tions of theology nor in his advocacy of reforms was 
Theodore Parker on the popular side. Strange as it 
seems to us to-dav, his utterances were deemed so dan- 
gerous that at first no publisher would consent to 
put his name on Parker's pamphlets; and yet, either 
through the force of his ideas or through the force of 
his personality, he compelled a hearing. 

When a man succeeds in doing this, the question 
often arises, What is the secret of his power? Some- 
times this is easily apparent. It lies in the arts of 
rhetoric, in grace of elocution, in fascination of manner, 
in artistic power of depiction. Dickens or Howells 
could write interestingly about a three-legged stool. 
Chrysostom, if he had taken the same text, might 
have shown its relation to the Delphic tripod, and then 
preached a glowing sermon on the divine oracles. 



vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



On the other hand, the secret of oratorical or ser- 
monic power is often strangely elusive; it resides in 
some mysterious element of personality which we can 
feel, but cannot define. The speaker magnetizes his 
audience, not by the force of his ideas or the force of 
his words, bur by the personality which projects them. 
It is not the nature of the message, but the shock of 
the battery which we feel. The message might be 
changed; but if we were brought within the circuit of 
influence, we should feel the electricity just the same. 
This accounts for the great disparity which often exists 
between a man's spoken and written word. "When we 
read in print the utterances of some of the great 
preachers of the present or the past> we fail to get 
any idea of their power. The thought is commonplace ; 
it does not set us thinking. Exhortation is there; it 
does not move us. On the other hand, there are 
preachers who throw themselves in a remarkable man- 
ner into their writings. They magnetize type as easily 
as they can an audience. We feel the force of their 
ideas, the glow of their emotions, the play of their 
wit, the melting tenderness of their pathos, in the 
printed page. They set us thinking, or they set us 
feeling; they stir our pulses. 

Theodore Parker's presence and delivery added, as 
every true preacher's must, to the power of his mes- 
sage; but his effective force did not depend upon his 
elocution or graces of delivery. Undoubtedly, he first 
attained prominence by what he had to say, not merely 
by the way he said it. His sermon was carefully pre- 



INTRODUCTION. 



pared before it was brought into the pulpit. It was 
not drawn merely from inkstand and dictionary, but 
from the best powers of mind and heart. 

The writer's interest in Parker was kindled, not by 
hearing him, but by taking from the shelves of a 
library a volume of his sermons. It glowed with con- 
viction and quickened thought and sentiment j it was a 
live coal from the altar. 

There were thousands during the life of Parker, as 
there have been thousands since, who knew him only 
through the printed page. They could not see the 
fountain play every Sunday, but their brains and hearts 
were irrigated by the stream which flowed through the 
channel of the press. Such a stream niay flow on and 
swell the currents of human life long after the fountain 
has ceased to play. 

It was said of Increase Mather by his admiring 
parishioners that he seldom preached a sermon that 
was not worth printing. After Parker came into pub- 
lic notice and influence in Boston, the demand for the 
publication of his sermons was so constant that we may 
suppose his warmest admirers held his discourses in 
similar esteem. He preached much on the topics of 
the time; and many of his most direct and forcible 
sermons in that influential period of his life were 
printed at once by his followers. The English edition 
of Theodore Parker's works, in fourteen volumes, edited 
by Frances Power Cobbe, contains the cream of all that 
he wrote in the most active period of his life, — his dis- 
courses on "Beligion t " on "Slavery," "Politics," 



viii 



INTRODUCTION, 



" Social Science/' his "Critical and Miscellaneous 
Essays/' his " Historic Americans, " "Prayers/' and 
much miscellaneous matter. In the Boston Public 
Library there is a large collection of pamphlets, dupli- 
cating some of the subjects in these volumes, giving 
many discussions and discourses of the hour, and show- 
ing how remarkably fruitful and industrious was their 
author. 

The period in Parker's life which has not been cov- 
ered in his publications, and which was therefore known 
only by those who came into personal relations with 
him as parishioners, is the period of his ministry at 
West Koxbury, Massachusetts. This volume therefore 
has a twofold raison d'etre. First, it throws light upon 
Parker's character and development by presenting 
some of his early and hitherto unpublished sermons. 
Secondly, the sermons themselves deal with themes of 
perennial interest, and have an immediate relation to 
life and character. 

It is natural that the early period of a public man's 
life should be the last to receive attention. It is not 
until he has made his way into fame that people begin 
to ask how he got there, and to study the trail he fol- 
lowed. His early works are, then, most valuable as 
links in the chain of his development. It is true of 
Parker as of Channing, that the development of his 
opinions needs to be studied with reference to their 
chronological order. His public reputation, fore- 
shadowed by his South Boston sermon in 1841, really 
began when he came to Boston, Feb. 16, 1845, to preach 



INTRODUCTION. 



ix 



at the Melodeon in the forenoon, though still retaining 
his connection with the West Eoxbury parish, and 
preaching there in the afternoon. The Theodore Parker 
the public is familiar with is the Theodore Parker of 
the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society. Yet be- 
fore he began to preach in Boston, he had preached 362 
sermons to his West Eoxbury congregation. Counting 
his exchanges, he had preached 766 times. He was 
then thirty-five years of age, and had been pastor of 
the West Eoxbury church for eight years. Of these 
362 sermons, the discourse on "The Transient and 
Permanent in Christianity," and the five discourses on 
" Matters pertaining to Eeligion, ,? given in the au- 
tumn of 1841, were printed, the first one in pamphlet 
form; the others were reported in the New York (( Trib- 
une, " and published in a volume the next spring. 

More than two years ago the whole collection of 
Parker's sermons in manuscript was kindly placed at 
my service by his literary executor, Mr. Prank B. 
Sanborn. They are 925 in number, and have been 
carefully bound. An interesting guide-book to this 
vast mass of manuscript is Parker's index, kept in a 
square blank-book, in his own hand, in a systematic 
way. It is entitled " Preachings." In one column 
he records consecutively the number of preachings ; in 
a second column the number of the sermon, followed 
by the record of place, time, subject, and text. In the 
latter part of the book there is another list of sermons, 
with number, subject, text, and occasionally comments 
on his sermons. This book furnishes an indication of 



X 



INTRODUCTION. 



Parker's own relative estimate of his unpublished dis- 
courses. Another guide in studying them has been 
one which every minister will appreciate. When we 
find a sermon preached ten or a dozen, or, as with one 
of Parker's sermons, twenty-five times, it is a sufficient 
indication that the sermon was a favorite one with the 
preacher and his audiences. I have picked out, there- 
fore, those which he preached most on exchange. 

"What shall we say, then, of these earlier sermons of 
Parker, covering as they do in number more than one 
fourth of his manuscripts? He has left us his own 
testimony as to the general fruitfulness and interest of 
this early period when he was spreading his wings and 
learning to fly. 

On leaving the Divinity School, to which, against 
the advice of many friends, he had been drawn by irre- 
sistible attraction, Parker preached in various places, 
particularly Salem and IT orthfield, until called to West 
Roxbury. He wrote about forty sermons before his 
settlement. Of these early sermons he says, in his 
"Experience as a Minister": — 

' c Of course, my first sermons were only imitations ; and 
even if the thought might perhaps be original, the form was 
old, the stereotype of the pulpit. I preached with fear and 
trembling, and wondered that old and mature persons, rich 
in the experience of life, should listen to a young man, who 
might indeed have read and thought, but yet had had no time 
to live much and know things by heart. I took all possible 
pains with the matter of the discourse, and always appealed 
to the religious instinct in mankind. At the beginning I re- 
solved to preach the natural laws of man as they are writ in 



INTRODUCTION. 



xi 



his constitution, no less and no more. After preaching a few 
months in various places, and feeling my way into the con- 
sciousness of man, I determined to preach nothing as religion 
which I had not experienced inwardly and made my own, 
knowing it by heart. Thus not only the intellectual, but 
also the religious part of my sermons would rest on facts that 
I was sure of, and not on the word of another." 

Of these forty sermons preached before settlement, 
seven were Divinity School exercises, and written on 
the following topics, — 6 6 Idolatry, " " Excuses of the 
Irreligious/' " The Way of Salvation, " 66 Disinterested 
Virtue/' " Retribution," " Necessity of an Honest 
Life," " Religion a Principle and Sentiment." These 
Divinity School discourses are what we might expect 
of a young theological student. Parker properly char- 
acterized them as imitation sermons. There was no 
lack of earnestness and sincerity; but their form was 
conventional. His progressive spirit is easily apparent 
in these early sermons ; but they were not aggressive 
or polemic. He had not entered into the storm and 
stress which came upon him six years later. 

The spirit in which Parker did his work at West 
Roxbury, on his settlement in 1837, is set forth in his 
own recital of his experiences as a minister : — 

"On the longest day of 1837 1 was ordained minister of 
the Unitarian church and congregation at West Roxbury, a 
little village near Boston, — one of the smallest societies in 
New England, — where I found men and women whose 
friendship is still dear and instructive. . . . For the first year 
or two the congregation did not exceed seventy persons, in- 
cluding the children. I soon became well acquainted with all 



xii 



INTRODUCTION. 



in the little parish, where I found some men of rare enlighten- 
ment, some truly generous and noble souls. I knew the char- 
acters of all, and the thoughts of such as had them. I took 
great pains with the composition of my sermons; they were 
never out of my mind. I had an intense delight in writing 
and preaching ; but I was a learner quite as much as a 
teacher, and was feeling my way forward and upward with 
one hand, while I tried to lead men with the other. I 
preached natural laws, nothing on the authority of any 
church, any tradition, any sect, though I sought illustration 
and confirmation from all these sources. For historical 
things I told the historical evidence ; for spiritual things I 
found ready proof in the primal instincts of the soul, and 
confirmation in the life of religious men. The simple life of 
the farmers, mechanics, and milkmen about me, of its own 
accord, turned into a sort of poetry, and reappeared in the 
sermons, as the green woods not far off looked in at the win- 
dows of the meeting-house. I think I preached only what 
I had experienced in my own inward consciousness, which 
widened and grew richer as I came into practical contact 
with living men, turned time into life, and mere thought 
became character." 

It was said by Parker's parishioners in "West Box* 
bury, who afterward heard him in Boston, that some of 
his most beautiful discourses were those preached in the 
little country church which he loved so well. He dealt 
not only with the great problems of the universe, but 
with the problems of daily life. The topics of his first 
year's discourses, after his settlement, were nearly all 
practical themes, such as " The Use of Crosses," 5 
" Spirituality of Man," "Knowing Thyself," "The 
Duty of Veracity," " Self-Eenewal, " " Tranquillity," 
" Labor, " " Happy Home, 99 "A Penny a Day, 9t " Self- 



INTRODUCTION. 



xiii 



Command/' %{ Resi gnat ion/' "Independence," " Edu- 
cation/ ' etc. There was one sermon, on " The Fall of 
Man," more or less polemical ; and he also wrote in that 
year two sermons on " Contradictions in Scripture," 
but he tells us in his record-book, " These two were not 
preached till fifty-five other sermons were written." 
In this instance at least, he was not hasty in present- 
ing new theories or in attacking old ones. 

In reading over and preparing for the press this vol- 
ume of Parker's unpublished sermons, I have pur- 
posely omitted those of his early years on doctrinal 
subjects, which he treated more fully and with greater 
maturity in later life. If we wish to study a man's 
doctrinal system, it is best to take it when it is most 
developed. We must wait until the mind has attained 
its best culture, and until the intellect has had time to 
digest its accumulations. With feeling and sentiment 
it is different; these are often warmest, most buoyant 
and influential, in one's early ministry. Parker's feel- 
ings never could be extinguished; they surged up all 
through his life in his most powerful sermons against 
every form of injustice and wrong; but it is interest- 
ing to see them in their early expression. The historic 
Theodore Parker, distinguished as a leader in social, 
moral, and theological reform, is a controversialist. 
When summoned by what he interpreted as the voice 
of duty, he entered the conflict with great power. He 
was led by the intensity of his feeling to say sharp and 
bitter things, which served to alienate some of his 
Unitarian brethren who might not have been alienated 



xiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



by his doctrines. His sermons became far less conven- 
tional; they were more intellectual, more scholastic, 
adorned with the pictures woven by a glowing imagi- 
nation. We miss the tranquillity of the studious, 
happy life in the country parsonage, surrounded by ge- 
nial and loving parishioners, to whom he tenderly and 
faithfully ministered. Very significant and pathetic 
is his entry in the index of his sermons, after No. 413, 
in 1846. "Here sorrowfully I end my connection 
with the parish in West Eoxbury. Alas, me!" 

The present volume, therefore, is in some respects a 
new contribution to the mental and religious history of 
Theodore Parker. He does not appear here so much as 
the reformer or controversialist, but as the preacher of 
a suburban parish, breaking the bread of life to his 
congregation from week to week. Many know what 
Parker's great sermons were. It will be interesting to 
see what was the weekly fare he gave to his congrega- 
tion. They are sermons chosen not so much for their 
thought-power as for their relation to life and conduct, 
and are as good to-day as when they were delivered. 
They cover the period from the beginning of his min- 
istry at West Eoxbury to the year following his settle- 
ment in Boston. Six of them were delivered before 
his famous South Boston sermon; and nine were deliv- 
ered after it. Three were delivered both in West Eox- 
bury and in Boston, when Parker was preaching in the 
morning in Boston and in the afternoon at " home," as 
he called the West Eoxbury pulpit. Two of them were 
delivered in 1846, the year after he began preaching 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



in Boston. They show that the spirit of the West 
Eoxbury ministry was continued in Boston. 

The work of transcribing and preparing the manu- 
scripts has been an interesting but difficult task. 
Parker was an inspired writer, not an inspired pen- 
man. His earliest sermons are comparatively legible, 
but the trail of his pen soon becomes difficult to fol- 
low, and leads the transcriber into mazes of doubt and 
conjecture. The use of abbreviations increases the 
difficulty. The transcripts were first made in the rough 
by a typewriter, and then subjected to two and some- 
times three comparisons with the original. Difficult 
passages have been submitted to experts, but for the 
general accuracy of transcription the reader is most 
indebted to my wife, Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, who 
has carefully compared each line with the original 
manuscript. Occasionally a sentence which could be 
spared has been omitted on account of some uncon- 
querable word. The punctuation has been modernized, 
but the characteristics of Parker's style, often leading 
to peculiar and individual turns of expression, have 
been preserved. Here and there in the manuscripts 
are indications that extemporaneous illustrations were 
introduced; but the sermons show for the most part 
the nature and extent of Parker's pulpit preparation. 
The man and the day must be added to reproduce the 
impression they made. 

In selecting the sermons, I have had the advantage 
of the judgment of Rev. Samuel Longfellow in regard 
to some, and of Rev. 0. B. Prothingham in regard 



xvi 



INTRODUCTION. 



to others. Mr. Sanborn has kindly read the revised 
proof. 

Undoubtedly, were Parker living now, he wouU 
change a few expressions in his sermons. Keeping 
abreast of modern scholarship, as he certainly would 
have done, such changes would here and there have 
been necessary. In his sermon on "Tranquillity," for 
instance, he speaks of three millions of Hebrew slaves 
rising as one man. Had he been familiar with the 
result of later biblical criticism, he would have reduced 
these magnificent millions to smaller proportions. Yet 
it is remarkable that so few changes are necessary. 
Parker, if behind modern scholarship, was often in 
advance of modern thought. Fifteen years before Dar- 
win's "Origin of Species" was printed, he partially 
anticipated the development theory in his sermon on 
"Christian Advancement " (1844). 

It is proper that the reader should know that while 
the work of the Editor and his wife has been wholly a 
labor of love, the cost of transcription was generously 
borne by three of "the old guard," — Mr. John L. 
Whiting, Mr. John C. Haynes, and Mr. A. A. Bur- 
rage. For the benefit of those who are not familiar 
with the main facts of Parker's career, a brief sketch of 
his life has been contributed by Mr. Sanborn. 



SAMUEL J. BARROWS. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



I HAVE been asked, as I was asked ten years ago, 
when an edition of Theodore Parker's "Prayers ?? 
was reprinted, to furnish a brief sketch of the man, 
whom I knew intimately, and whom few that saw or 
heard him could ever forget. He was born in Lexing- 
ton, two miles south of the battle-ground (where his 
grandfather commanded the minute-men of Lexington, 
April 19, 1775), on the farm of his father, John Parker, 
Aug. 24, 1810 ; he died in Florence, May 10, 1860, 
and is buried, with Landor, Mrs. Browning, and other 
illustrious Protestants, in the small and crowded ceme- 
tery outside the old walls of that city of Dante and 
Michael Angelo, — men whom he resembled in courage 
and faith, and somewhat in fortune. I would not com- 
pare him to the half-insane monk, Savonarola, whom he 
equalled as a preacher; for Parker never yielded to the 
delusions of power, and never had occasion to recant or 
retract. Over his grave, two months ago, the sculptor 
Story, with funds contributed by the friends of free- 
dom and of Parker, — they were never disjoined, — 

b 



xviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



placed a monument bearing the Platonic features of 
the man, and inscribed, — 

THEODORE PARKER, 

THE GREAT AMERICAN PREACHER. 

This volume will indicate how early and by what 
rich eloquence, yet simple, searching, and full of high 
aspiration, Parker won this title. He had educated 
himself at home, and in the schools which he taught, 
rather than in those where he was pupil, when, in 
1834, he entered the Divinity School of Cambridge, 
where Andrews Norton, Henry Ware the younger, and 
Doctor Palfrey, the historian, became his instructors in 
theology. Graduating thence in 1836, he entered the 
pulpit with diffidence and hope, and at the age of 
twenty-seven began to preach as a pastor at West Eox- 
bury, where the sermons in this collection were deliv- 
ered to a small congregation, gradually growing larger 
as the remarkable powers of this rustic scholar and 
apostle began to be appreciated in the neighboring 
city of Boston, of which Parker's country parish has 
now become a rural quarter. In 1837-45 it was, as 
Ellery Channing said of Baker Farm, a 

" Cell of seclusion, 
Haunt of old Time/' 

where the hours were long, the books many, the scho- 
lastic friends few, and where Parker laid broad the 
foundations of that scholarship which he afterward 
used so effectively. But in these early sermons little 
display of learning appears ; here is heart speaking to 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



XIX 



heart, and soul inquiring of soul, not with Hebrew 
treachery, but with Saxon sincerity, "Art thou in 
health, my brother? " 

In 1843 his own physical health began to suffer, and 
he took a year's furlough for a visit to Europe, where 
no man ever put his days to better interest, — fixing 
in his retentive mind, through those searching and 
profound eyes of his, the latitude and longitude of the 
religious, political, and social world of his time, as 
well as the situation of cities, the manners of men, the 
secret treasure of libraries, and the marvellous accumu- 
lations of art, religious and pagan. Fortunate in his 
comjDanions, among whom were Horace Mann, Dr. Howe 
the philanthropist, and his poetic wife, he was also 
fortunate in the friends he made in England and 
Germany, among whom may be named that venerable 
scholar, Dr. Martineau, who has done for his native 
country what Parker did for America, through a longer 
life and a more precise scholarship, though with an 
eloquence less fervid and popular. 

Eeturned to ISTew England, Parker soon found himself 
invited to preach to a larger audience in Boston, and 
there, Eeb. 16, 1845, he gave his first discourse in the 
old Melodeon on Washington Street, on "The Indis- 
pensableness of True Keligion for Man's Welfare in 
his Individual and Social Life." That title might 
serve for the whole body of his doctrine and especially 
for this volume, — since true religion and man's wel- 
fare are his constant themes in these pages. But the 
place and the crisis — the same which the young poet 



XX 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



Lowell depicted in his verses of that period ("The 
Present Crisis ?? ) — soon invited him to a mission truly 
apostolic, in which he fairly earned the name our 
sculptor has given him. It was left for Story's friend, 
this same young poet, Lowell, in 1848, when Parker 
had been for three years wrestling with principalities 
and powers at Boston, to describe the great preacher 
in words which need but little change, in view of his 
later life, — so true is the critical insight : — 

" Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man 
Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban ; 

But the ban was too small, or the man was too big, 
For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig. 
He don't look like a man who would stay treated shabbily, 
Sophroniscus's son's head o'er the features of Eabelais; 
He bangs and bethwacks them, — their backs he salutes 
With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots. 

Now, P.'s creed than yours may be lighter or darker, 
But in one thing 't is clear he has faith ; namely — Parker. 
And this is what makes him the crowd -drawing preacher, 
There's a background of god to each hard-working feature; 
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced 
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest. 

But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke, 
Like the blows of a lumberman felling an oak. 

You forget the man wholly, — you 're thankful to meet 
With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street, 
And to hear, you 're not over-particular whence, 
Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense." 



This last line might well describe these early ser- 
mons; and here I might leave the subject. But the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



xxi 



great work of Parker's life was still before him at the 
age of thirty-five, as that of most men is. He preached 
in Boston, and lectured and spoke at political gather- 
ings and before committees of the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature, for fourteen years after February, 1845, and 
both his toil and its result were enormous. The labor 
broke him down, and in January, 1859, he left Boston 
for the West Indies, Switzerland, and, finally, Italy; 
from that beautiful land he never returned. His mortal 
illness came upon him at Rome, but he refused to die 
in that seat of ecclesiastic tyranny, and what was then 
political slavery. He bent his will, strong even in 
that agony, toward the freer air of Florence, and in 
that he breathed for a few weeks, with pain and lan- 
guor, until death came to relieve him one lovely 
morning in Jlay, — 

" And there, at Florence, gave 
His body to that pleasant country's earth, 
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, 1 
Under whose colors he had fought so long." 

I have cited Lowell, our second among American 
critics, as to the Parker of 1845-48. Let me now 
recall the words of a critic, greater and of profounder 
insight, Emerson, uttered at the funeral service for 
Parker at Boston, in June, 1860. They cover the 

1 I make no scruple to apply this eulogy of the " banished Nor- 
folk" to Theodore Parker, for Jesus was his captain, though not 
his God. It has never been said that the Romans were more valiant 
when their general was worshipped as a deity, than when he was 
imitated as a hero. 



xxii 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



period following that in which Lowell described him, 
and have even greater weight : — 

u He has so woven himself in these few years (1845-1859) 
into the history of Boston, that he can never be left out of 
your annals. In the plain lessons of Theodore Parker, in 
this Music Hall, 1 in Faneuil Hall, or in legislative committee 
rooms, the true temper and authentic record of those days 
will be read. The next generation will care little for fine 
gentlemen who behaved shabbily, but it will read very intel- 
ligently in his rough story, fortified with exact anecdotes, 
precise with names and dates, what part was taken by each 
actor; who threw himself into the cause of humanity; who 
came to the rescue of civilization at a hard pinch, — and who 
blocked its course. In terrible earnest he denounced the 
public crime, and meted out to every official, high and low, 
his true portion. He took away the reproach of silent con- 
sent that would otherwise have lain against the indignant 
minority. The brave know the brave. His manly enemies 
honored him ; and it is well known that his great hospitable 
heart was the sanctuary to which every soul conscious of an 
earnest opinion came for sympathy. For every sound heart 
loves a responsible person, — one who does not in generous 
company say generous things, and in mean company base 
things, but says one thing, now cheerfully, now indignantly, 
but always because he must. Ah, my brave brother! it seems 
as if, in a frivolous age, our loss were immense, and your 
place cannot be supplied. But the nature of the world will 
affirm to all men, in all times, that which for twenty-five 
years you valiantly spoke ; the winds of Italy murmur the 
same truth over your grave ; the winds of America over these 
bereaved streets. The sea that bore your mourners home 
affirms it, the stars in their courses, and the inspirations of 
youth; wmilst the polished and pleasant traitors to human 

1 He preached there for seven years. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



xxiii 



rights, with perverted learning and disgraced graces, rot and 
are forgotten with their double tongue, saying all that is 
sordid for the corruption of man." 

It was needful for Emerson to say this, with a cen- 
sure as sharp as Parker's own, in that dismal day be- 
fore our Civil War, when the horizon looked darkest, 
and the fortunes of our country trembled in the balance. 
Much has been destroyed and forgotten since then, and 
much will hereafter come into remembrance that has 
been for a time forgotten. 

" Now has descended a serener hour, 
And with inconstant fortune friends return." 

I seem to recognize in the advanced theology of An- 
dover and Princeton, in the promotion to high clerical 
preferment of the tolerant and forward-looking Dr. 
Brooks, and in the lofty theologic ideal of Dr. Lyman 
Abbott, whom crowds in Boston and Brooklyn throng 
to hear, some of the harvest for which Emerson and 
Parker sowed the seed. 



F. B. SANBORN. 



SERMONS. 



L 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 



Matthew xxv. 14-30. 



'HE idea which this parable was designed to 



set forth is this : that a man's happiness 
on earth and in heaven depends solely upon the 
use he makes of his powers. Various faculties 
and different opportunities are afforded to different 
men ; but a man's merit and virtue consist entirely 
in the use he makes of them. Thus he who re- 
ceives two talents and gains two is no less meri- 
torious than he who receives five and gains other 
five, nor is the reward the less. It is the use, 
not the amount, of talents that constitutes virtue 
and of course happiness ; for virtue is the imme- 
diate cause of happiness. 

Now, there is a great variety in the gifts men 
are endowed with. Nature is everywhere various 
and manifold, and wisely is this variety extended 
to man. If all men were just alike in natural 




l 



2 TEE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 

powers and opportunities to use them, probably 
there would be as little progressive improvement 
in man as in the birds and the fishes. But now 
no two men are alike endowed ; the one has that 
gift, another this. One possesses all bodily virtues; 
another is gifted with great powers of mind ; and a 
third possesses the divinest of Nature's gifts, supe- 
rior moral powers. These are man's noblest facul- 
ties. Mind is indeed great. To measure the 
universe, ponder the stars in the balance of reason ; 
to understand the vast world around us or within ; 
to see effects in their causes, and foretell what will 
be the result of this or of that ; to detect causes in 
events and determine whence this was produced 
and how, and in the mirror of the present day to 
read the future and the past, — these are indeed 
noble powers, and bespeak the proud pre-eminence 
of him who is made but a little lower than the 
angels, and is crowned with glory and honor and 
immortality. But a man's happiness is not the 
necessary result of these powers of mind. Splendid 
as they may be, they are not our noblest ; for that 
power which controls appetite, shuts up passion 
within its just limits, and makes them both 
subservient to our will, is far greater. He that 
ruleth his own spirit is greater than he that 
taketh a city. He who every day does God's 
will, thinks his thoughts, feels his sentiments, 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 3 



lives the life of love, and holds divinest intercourse 
with him by prayer, — he is as much nobler than 
the man of the greatest powers of mind as the arch- 
angel is nobler than the prince of darkness, who 
is only u archangel ruined ; " that is, deprived of 
morality. 

All men perhaps are not capable of the loftiest 
extent of mind, therefore it is wise and merciful 
that happiness does not depend upon it ; for then 
happiness would be excluded from the major part 
of mankind, and this would be in direct contradic- 
tion with the whole analogy of Nature. For there 
all things the most useful are the most common. 
Every man knows that celestial wisdom of the 
heart is the principal thing, when he shudders at 
the wickedness of genius, and marks the terrific 
deviations from the course of virtue, and ponders 
upon the melancholy results. 

Now, though there is no doubt a greater differ- 
ence in the voluntary use men make of their intel- 
lectual talents than in the talents themselves, yet 
perhaps the difference in moral and religious 
powers is less still than in our faculties of mind. 
So though it is not possible that all men, after all 
their strivings, can attain the same stature of 
greatness of mind, yet all may attain the same 
measure of morality and the same eminence in 
every virtue. All men's duties are the same in 



4 THE PARABLE OF THE TALEXTS. 



this respect ; and if all have not the power of dis- 
charging a duty, then of course the duty ceases. 
Now, that state and degree of morality which men 
are to strive after is simply this : complete con- 
formity with the law of our being, the coincidence 
of our will with that of the divine will, as all wis- 
dom is the coincidence of our thought with that of 
the Almighty. Now, every man is capable of this, 
for he confesses it to himself whenever he acknowl- 
edges he has done wrong, and repents of it ; for 
how can a man be said to have done wrong, when 
he has merely failed of doing what it was impos- 
sible to do? We see then that men's moral powers, 
though doubtless they differ one from another, are 
all alike in this : they are capable of being carried 
out to perfection, making our will coincident with 
God's. And since happiness depends most of all 
upon the use, and not the amount, of moral 
powers, then our blessedness in this life, and that 
to come, must depend upon the degree of culture 
we have bestowed upon these moral and religious 
faculties. 

Now, Jesus, in the parable, admits this difference 
in the talents and opportunities of men, when he 
represents one as receiving five, another two, an- 
other one, and declares that each man's portion 
was capable of being converted to the same use, — 
that is, of being carried out to perfection, — when he 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 5 



shows that all were to be judged by the same stan- 
dard, and to answer to the same question, " What 
hast thou done with the talents committed unto 
thee ? " 

The parable states that the Lord of the servant 
came and reckoned with them and gave judgment 
according to the use made of his charge. Now, let 
us suppose for a moment that this question were at 
this moment to be put individually to all men, 
"What hast thou done with the talents lent 
thee?" How varied would be the replies; what 
different emotions would be painted upon men's 
faces at this startling query ! What would become 
of the man of seeming, who cares nothing about 
being what he seems ? How different would be 
the replies of the men of different ages and coun- 
tries of the world ! The Christian and the infidel, 
the worshipper of idols and the Mahometan, he 
who reveres beast and bird, the sun-worshipper and 
the Jew, might come up together to reply. The 
naked African might say, " Lord, thou gavest me 
but one talent. I have used it diligently. I deemed 
that thou didst dwell in every little animal upon 
the earth, and I bowed to thee and offered sacrifice. 
I felt thy breath in the wind, and lay prostrate be- 
fore thee. I feared thy anger and offered thee my 
all. Accept, Lord, the best of my feeble services." 
The Lord must say, " Thou hadst but one talent, 



6 THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 



yet thou hast used it well ; enter thou into the joy 
of thy Lord." 

The Jew of olden time might come up from the 
banks of the Jordan, his hands hardened with toil 
for the sanctuary, his feet weary with pilgrimage 
in the desert, and his garments spotted with the 
blood of his sacrifice. He might say, " Here are 
the results of my gain. I deemed that thou didst 
command me to toil on in the wilderness, hoping 
for the promised land ; that thou didst exact hard 
service from me, my gold for thy tabernacle, my 
oxen and my sheep for thy altar, my toil for thy 
sanctuary, and my attention to a thousand minute 
ceremonies. So I have kept thy law, minute and 
burdensome as it is, and here are the proofs of 
my toil. Take that which is thine own, and par- 
don my shortcomings." The savage would come 
up from every land, from the North and the 
South, from the East and the West, and would say, 
" Lord, I deemed thee an hard master, making thy 
yoke grievous and thy burdens heavy. The way of 
duty was difficult to find and more difficult to keep. 
Yet have we essayed to do thy will." The Indian 
from the Ganges would say, u I believed that thou 
didst delight in the mortification of my body, there- 
fore have I inflicted pain upon myself. I have 
scourged my body, have tortured my flesh, muti- 
lated my limbs, and emaciated my whole frame. I 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 7 



thought that thou wouldst be most pleased should 
I contemplate thee alone. Therefore I forsook the 
abodes of my fellows ; I dwelt in the mountain 
and the desert ; the cold and the heat have clone 
their work upon me ; and still I have glorified 
thy name, for thou wouldst have me do so. I 
knew thou wast austere and hard toward me, and 
in my worship of sorrow I have offered thee the 
choicest of my affections, my goods, my body, my 
thoughts. I have consumed these my children as 
a whole burnt offering to thee, — there is blood 
upon my head ; and at last I have given my own 
mutilated and wretched body. Lord, here is 
thy talent." 

The careless man, he who was nurtured in the 
arms of a Christian society, yet turned away from 
this parent, would come and say, " Lord, thou 
gavest me five talents. Here are they, carefully 
wrapped up in the napkin. I knew the nobleness 
of my nature, the godlikeness of my spiritual powers, 
yet I cared not to exercise them. I felt that riches 
take to themselves wings and fly away, yet I trusted 
solely in them, uncertain as they were. Knowing 
that they were not bread, I labored for them alone ; 
and that they were but nought, I spent for them all 
my strength. Thou gavest me blessings ; yet I 
warmed not men's hearts with gratitude, gave not 
to the poor, cared not for the true riches." 



8 THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 



The man of pleasure might say, " I knew the 
sacredness of duty, the deep joy and blessedness of 
obedience. I saw the examples of the chosen 
ones, Abraham and Isaac and Moses and Jesus 
and Paul and the pious of my own day. I knew 
thou wast a God of loving-kindness and tender 
mercy, continually bestowing favors and promising 
even eternal happiness ; but I cared nothing for 
duty, but sought only pleasure. I mocked at the 
examples of goodness thou hadst set before me, 
and gave myself no concern about my loftiest and 
divinest powers, but lived only to the flesh. I 
occupied my mind with trifles, — things that perish 
in the using, — while immortality and heaven were 
before me." 

Here and there would come the true Christians 
who had borne the burden of self-denial in the heat 
of the day, who had toiled up the mountain of temp- 
tation till they stood on the high ground of duty 
and self-control, and saw themselves transfigured 
into shapes of greater truth and holiness, till they 
felt all the meaning of virtue, all the energy of 
prayer, and all the blessedness of Christianity. To 
such well may the Lord say. " Enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord ; thou hast been faithful over few 
things, I will make thee ruler over many things. ' J 
For already has he entered the kingdom; already 
is all moral power in heaven and earth given unto 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, 



9 



him, and already have Christ and the Father taken 
up their abode with him. 

Now, this reward for the use of our powers is no 
figure of speech, no figment of fancy ; it is something 
real. We are not to expect that recompense will 
be made to a man in an outward manner, so that 
so much of virtuous action, of just thought, of true 
feeling, shall be determined, and therefore so much 
recompense be given from an outward source ; but 
the reward is the natural, unavoidable consequence 
which follows from well-doing. We are not to ex- 
pect that during all a man's life his virtue or sel- 
fishness will exert no influence upon him, bringing 
him no reward or punishment, no pleasure and no 
pain, but at some future day, in another world, it 
shall be done, his virtues being balanced by blessed- 
ness, and his vices by unhappiness. This is not the 
doctrine of the Scriptures. We are nowhere told 
in them, and reason will not lead to the conclusion, 
that any positive and outward reward shall be given 
from a foreign source as the recompense of our 
character, but that character itself is its own re- 
compense. All the outward universe is too poor 
a return, is no return for godliness. The recom- 
pense for good deeds comes from the other side, 
from the inner man. The kingdom of heaven is 
its recompense ; but that is within us. The empire 
of darkness is the penalty of violated law, of duties 



10 THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 

undone, holy feelings suppressed ; but that empire 
of darkness is within us, and the prince of dark- 
ness is every wicked man. Godliness is the king- 
dom of heaven, ungodliness the kingdom of hell ; 
they are within the breast of the Christian and the 
un-Christian. 

Nor again are we to suppose that retribution is 
put off till a distant day. True, it is so represented 
in the parable, but the closing and main idea, and 
not the literal construction alone, is to be regarded ; 
and taking this as our guide, we are no more to 
suppose that retribution is put off till the end of 
the world than that the Almighty is absent from 
any part of the universe. No, the Almighty reckons 
with us every day ; every day is a day of judgment 
upon all preceding actions. The thoughts we now 
form and the train of ideas that sweeps through 
our minds are the results of previous thoughts, and 
of other foregoing trains of ideas which extend 
back to our very infancy, as the rose which blooms 
to-day is the fruit of all the summers and winters 
since creation, and could not exist had not they 
gone before. Had our previous thoughts been other- 
wise, the present thought could not exist in our 
minds. This accounts for the different estimates 
men form of the same action or sentiment, and 
shows that the words of Christ are literally true, — 
that for every idle word men shall account at the 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 



11 



day of judgment. All coining time sits in judg- 
ment upon the past. In its course all feelings and 
thoughts will be reproduced in us, as each goes to 
make up our character; and thus shall it be ac- 
counted for, and the recompense for the good or 
bad use of our talents be afforded us. 

The history of a man's life is thus the judgment 
of a man's life. The footprints of justice are deeply 
set along the highway we travel. Xot only are our 
actions productive of an effect, good or bad, upon 
us, but our most secret thoughts and feelings, those 
which are shut up in the sanctuary of our own 
hearts and dwelt upon in secret, never communi- 
cated to our most intimate friend, — all these have 
their recompense. If not to-day, at length it comes. 
Justice, though slow, is always sure, for it is the 
minister of the Almighty to make men blessed. 
Even those thoughts which we only cherish upon 
the express condition of their never appearing in 
our conduct, even they have their reward ; and al- 
most always it cometh speedily. But if not, if 
anything is swept away unjudged, unrewarded, 
unpunished, the stream of time beareth it to the 
great ocean of eternity, where complete justice will 
be done, and where we trust each man will at length 
make amends for the neglect and disobedience of 
this life. 

Were we permitted to penetrate that holy of ho- 



12 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 



lies, the good man's heart, where he dwells in the 
intimate presence of God and holds high converse, 
we should find there a stronger persuasion to use 
well the many talents committed to us than if one 
rose from the dead. Nay, if one with all the wis- 
dom of truth, all the eloquence of persuasion, should 
attempt to lead us, his preaching were cold and 
profitless in comparison with that silent sermon 
which every good man delivers to him who will at- 
tend. The example of Jesus is more eloquent than 
even his words, though he spake as man never 
spoke. And if the example of the good is one of 
the strongest and most persuasive, so on the other 
hand the condition of the wicked would be a most 
useful and solemn warning against any misuse of 
our talents. Everywhere in the universe there is a 
perfect system of profit and loss, — so much virtue 
and so much heavenly-mindedness, self-denial, reli- 
gion ; so much happiness in this life, so much bles- 
sedness in that to come. On the other hand, so 
much wickedness, vicious indulgence, profligacy, so 
much misery. The time a man steals from his 
proper devotions and hours consecrated to the im- 
provement of his immortal self, and what he fool- 
ishly squanders, is just so much taken from this 
happiness. The fraud one commits, like the stone 
thrown into the air, falls upon his own head ; his 
iniquity returns into his own bosom. No man can 



THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. 13 

defraud his neighbor so much as he injures himself 
by that very act. A man cozens his fellow of a 
penny, but he cozens his own conscience of a pound. 
He blesses in little, and is profited in much. Herein 
is the greatness and perfection of God's laws mani- 
fest, that by his own act and within his own heart 
is perfect justice done. No minute act is too little 
to receive notice, none too large to go unjudged. 
There is no room for accident. Nought comes 
amiss. They who use well their talents enter into 
the Master's glory ; faithful in little, they will like- 
wise be faithful in much. Their reward is with 
them. They mount up toward heaven like eagles ; 
they run and are not weary, and walk and are not 
faint. The ungodly are not so ; the men of seeming 
are but as chaff which the wind driveth away ; the 
unprofitable servant cannot hope to find harvest 
where he has scattered no seed. 

To two classes of men the parable speaks. To 
those who spend their lives carelessly, making no 
effort for virtue, heedless of opportunity, deaf to 
God's Spirit speaking in every man, it saith, 
" Where are the talents committed to thee ? " To 
him who in defiance of his better nature, in utter 
violation of the sacred voice of duty, forsakes the 
way of godliness, giving loose rein to appetite and 
passion, it utters its deep rebuke, " What hast thou 
done ? " But to the true Christian it whispers words 



14 THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, 

of peace and speaks with the voice of Jesus, " Lo, 
God is with thee unto the end of the world. Go on 
in thine heavenly course. Heaven lies about thee ; 
peace dwells within. Thou art a son of the king- 
dom ; thou art a son of God." 



1837. 



II, 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot : I would thou 



AN has two natures. When we look upon 



-L ▼ -I- one of them, we declare him to be a most 
lofty and noble creation. How vast his powers ! 
He subdues Nature unto his hand, takes the rude 
and savage earth and creates it anew in his own 
image. He stamps his own likeness upon all 
things around him ; lives in the present, but upon 
the past, and for the future. What a godlike 
nature is in him, what loftiest aspirations, Teach- 
ings forward after perfection in all his best at- 
tributes, which are also the attributes of the Al- 
mighty ! Earth puts no limit to these strivings. 
Onward and still ever on, life in, life out, would he 
go, never satisfied with the attained, but restlessly 
striving after the highest good attainable. This is 
man living manlike, living for most worthy ends, — 
the ends for which he was designed and created. 
When such aspirations fire the soul, the whole of 



wert cold or hot. — Rev. iii. 15. 




16 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



this manifold life which we lead, its most humble 
labors as well as its greatest, its trials, encourage- 
ments, prosperities, and adversities, are all minis- 
tering servants to help forward the great design, — 
of unfolding and making perfect the spiritual na- 
ture of man, which is his immortal nature. To 
such an one all this life of ours, with the thousand 
influences of Nature, is a powerful ally. The infi- 
nite power of the All-powerful is working in his 
behalf, as the whole force of the wind bears on the 
sail of the seaman to aid his course. But look 
at our nature in another, a depraved state, and 
the aspect is widely different. Those actions of 
the spirit in man are paralyzed. Aspirations after 
unattained virtue cease to bear us up above the low 
state we have reached. Reverence, the sublimest 
attribute of man, which brings him into the most 
intimate presence of the Supreme, and the restless 
instinct of perfection, become cold and still, though 
never wholly extinct. The whole active force of 
the man is directed to humble ends, — to providing 
for the body its food, its warmth, and its raiment, 
to the heaping together of gold and silver, to fol- 
lowing some petty trifle. All these are well 
enough, even commendable, in their right places, 
when they engross only a just portion of a man's 
toil and attention ; but when they so far take pos- 
session of the man as to produce apathy upon all 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 17 



other matters, and lead to complete spiritual indif- 
ference, then is the case indeed a lamentable one. 
The giant power of the man is directed to un- 
worthy ends. Like Esau, he has sold his birthright 
for a morsel of meat ; like Samson, he grinds corn 
at the mill of his enemies. 

There are in every community those who, being 
innocent, do for that cause bestir them to good 
deeds ; in whose pure souls there shines and beams 
with immortal effulgence the pure light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, 
shedding a glory along the path of life, and striv- 
ing more and more unto the perfect day. Such 
souls there are now, as there ever have been since 
creation. Christianity born in men can never be 
quite extinguished and crushed out. No wise man 
will ever fear that religion will die out in this 
world, more than any other attribute of man. No 
one fears that man will cease to be a reasonable 
being or an active one or an industrious one ; and 
as little cause have we to fear that the whole fam- 
ily of man will cease to be religious and spiritual. 
But as there are times when each man's reason 
needs to be excited, his activity aroused, so there 
are also periods when religion in its spirit and its 
power seems to produce little effect upon the mass 
of a community, and spirituality is wellnigh smoth- 
ered in the cares and concerns of this life. Man is 

2 



18 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



as much a heavenly being as he is an earthly one, 
and far more so ; for the meanest and most selfish 
of us all cannot live by bread alone. But there are 
many at all times — perhaps more than usual at this 
period — who care little for anything beyond this 
life, care far more for their bodies than their souls ; 
and while they are tremblingly alive to every petty 
affair of yesterday which is to be forgotten to-mor- 
row, they are dead to their immortal interests. It 
is unfortunate] v the case that there are those who 
care not enough about religion and spiritual matters 
even to oppose them or to ask about them. 

It is to such a state of feeling that the writer 
alludes in his text ; to the spiritually indifferent, 
— such as are neither cold nor hot, — whom he 
wishes were something decided either one way or 
the other. 

By spiritual indifference is not meant a natural 
coldness of temperament, for many of this nature 
are possessed with a beautiful spirit of piety and 
devotion which alone seems to shed light and joy 
into their characters. This devotion may not be 
rapid, but still it may be sure. They will not glow 
with the enthusiasm of a Paul ; but they will adhere 
with all his constancy, and stand like iron, not to 
be shaken. These the careless onlooker may call 
neither hot nor cold ; but their heat is none the 
less active or powerful because unseen. 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 19 



It is not ignorance of religious truth alone 
which constitutes spiritual indifference. Every man 
knows more of religion than the disciples of Jesus 
knew till long after his death. Yet they were not 
" neither hot nor cold." Many a rude savage feels 
the true spirit of religion leading him with resist- 
less yearnings to the spirit land, — which he will as 
surely reach as the Christian if he follows his 
guide, — who knows by his mind as little religious 
truth as may well be. And on the other hand, there 
are those who have learned enough of the outside 
of Christianity who are totally indifferent as to the 
spirit of it ; who care not at all to make themselves 
Christians, to inquire as to the real vitality of this 
religion, and to realize as life what they remotely 
apprehend as doctrine. The spiritually indiffer- 
ent are characterized as having eyes, yet seeing 
not, ears, yet not hearing, hearts, and understand- 
ing not. They may, like the cool Pharisees, walk 
through the seemly round of religious duties, and 
bless God that they are not as other men, yet 
never feel in their hearts that beautiful principle of 
religion overruling their passions and guiding them 
on toward perfection, — listless, inattentive men, 
not positively bad nor positively good, men who 
care nothing about it. 

Such, then, is spiritual indifference. Well may 
the apostle say, " I would thou wert either cold or 



20 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



hot ; " for there is no enemy so deadly to religion 
as this. Indeed, there is no state of mind so dan- 
gerous to the individual. A man may be an open 
enemy of religion, attempting by all the means in 
his power to undermine its foundations, to weaken 
its influence upon men's hearts, to work its final 
overthrow ; yet in all this he may be sincere. And 
the beauty and truth of Christianity may shine forth 
in such lovely and sublime light that his veiled lids 
shall be penetrated, his heart touched, and he be 
raised to the high estate from which he has fallen. 
So too a man may be given to excess ; passion may 
shake him to and fro; ambition, avarice, vice, may 
lead him ; but so long as his conscience utters its 
deep rebukes, so long as he sorrows for his depar- 
ture from the path of virtue, and even by this con- 
fesses the existence of religious emotions in his 
heart, so long there is hope. The good spirit in 
him may yet overcome ; principle may overcome 
passion, and the kingdom of heaven displace the 
kingdom of hell in his heart. But to the man 
who is indifferent to religion ; w T ho cares not enough 
about it to ask if it be true or false ; who attempts 
to check his loftiest aspirings until he sinks him- 
self down to the rank of a brute in spiritual matters, 
— w r hat power shall come to rescue him from the 
degradation whereinto he has hastened, what influ- 
ence shall descend from the shores of light, from 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



21 



God or man, to awaken his better spirit and renew 
the best attributes of a man within him ? On him 
the common events of life fall idle. His callous 
heart seems proof against the calm influence of 
Nature ; Conscience has been cheated into silence ; 
and the kindling thoughts of the wise, with the 
beautiful promise of immortal life, all are unfelt 
by him. 

The causes which produce spiritual indifference 
are various. In some it is the influence of a bad 
example. The man has grown up amid those 
who cared not for spiritual things, and he has un- 
consciously imbibed the principles and imitated the 
practice of those around him, thus receiving scepti- 
cism as it were by inheritance. Yet this is not 
necessarily the case. How often do we see the re- 
ligious rising up amid the indifferent, even of the 
vicious, — some happy herb growing under the very 
shadow of the poison tree ! Righteous Lot dwells 
in the midst of Sodom. All men from the least 
to the greatest are affected by those around them. 
We unconsciously copy the character of our asso- 
ciates. Hence in an irreligious community it is 
natural to suppose many will grow up in complete 
indifference to religion. 

Another cause is want of education. Some are 
too ignorant to understand the full beauty of reli- 
gion ; they feel the sentiment of religion, but do not 



22 SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



reason and reflect upon the duties that arise from 
it. Hence they do not understand what it is, 
what it demands of them, or what it promises to 
afford them. Perhaps ignorance is not the chief 
cause of this indifference ; and yet it is difficult to 
suppose that any man can understand it and still 
be indifferent. If a man understands his own 
nature and the religion which is necessary to it, it 
is as inconceivable that he should be indifferent as 
that a wise man should be indifferent to reason or 
to thought. The words of Jesus might be applied 
to most of the spiritually indifferent, " Ye know 
not what manner of spirit ye are of." Few men 
can be so ignorant as to know nothing of religion ; 
the instinct which leads to it is something born 
with every man. Religion has always found friends 
and enthusiastic supporters among the most igno- 
rant classes of the people ; the more profound and 
spiritual the religion, the greater the number of its 
followers among those whom custom had not per- 
verted. It was these men whom Jesus addressed, 
and they heard him gladly; from such came his 
disciples. Not that ignorance is the mother of de- 
votion, as some have impiously supposed, for the 
brightest lights of genius in every age have shone 
on the side of religion, but because their minds 
were not filled with prejudices which excluded spir- 
itual religion. 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



23 



A mistaken notion of Christianity leads often to 
indifference to the whole matter of religion. Many 
suppose that Christianity is the same thing now in 
form that it was in the early ages of the Church ; 
and seeing that such a religion would be to us but 
an empty form, they unwisely conclude that all re- 
ligion is no more, and therefore dismiss it from 
their thoughts. But is this so ? Is it not true that 
Christianity is an increasing light, that its great 
principles come forth slowly and by degrees, that 
every age must expound them for itself, create its 
own form, while the eternal spirit remains the 
same, to be reproduced successively by every age ? 
Christianity is not now apprehended in all its power ; 
as man progresses he will discover new truths in 
the gospel, new meaning in life, new capabilities in 
himself. Christianity does not now, for want of a 
true appreciation of it, exert that true power over 
men's minds and hearts which it will one day ob- 
tain. Men see how the religious world is torn by 
controversies, the seamless coat of Christ rent as 
it were by wild beasts, hence they conclude there 
is nothing worth attending to in Christianity. 
" All cannot be right," say they, " they are so dif- 
ferent ; and if one is wrong, why not another, why 
not all ? " But it would be just as wise to conclude 
that because all men cannot see alike, therefore 
there is no light nor vision, and so they may as 



24 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



well close their eyes. Every sect doubtless has 
its errors ; but each has its truths likewise. Some 
error seems necessary to man ; but some truth is no 
less indispensable. No sect can stand a moment 
upon error alone. God grant that the time may 
soon come when some new manifestation of Chris- 
tianity may take place that shall cast into the shade 
all present sects, all former developments of the 
religious sentiment, and stir men's hearts as they 
have never yet been moved, teach them wisdom 
which is pure and peaceable, give that peace and 
tranquillity and true blessedness which transcend 
all other bliss. 

Other causes are the fierceness with which men 
rush into the business of the day, making them- 
selves mere tools, spending all their force upon 
things which should receive but a part of it ; so 
that they become mere buyers and sellers and 
laborers, instead of men buying and selling and 
laboring. When things temporal are counted as 
the all in all, things eternal must be forgotten. 
Worldliness is a foe to heavenliness ; not that 
there is any opposition between this world and 
that to come, but because an excessive attention 
to the cares of life unfits the mind for higher con- 
cerns, though a proper attention to them is the 
best possible preparation for another world. 

The effects of this indifference are easily per- 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



25 



ceived. Man is degraded to an animal ; his best 
powers, those which will give him most satisfaction 
during his whole life in this world and in that to 
come, are never called into exercise. Half the 
meaning of life is lost to him. He is called to 
encounter temptations which he will not resist, to 
bear crosses which he cannot endure, and to en- 
counter trials which are too severe for him. All 
these have no meaning for him. If they are borne, 
he sees no end attained ; he only feels their weight. 
In prosperity, he sees but animal blessings which 
spring out of the ground or are won by his toil, 
never realizes the gifts of an all-bounteous Father. 
To him the duties of life are no school for godliness ; 
life itself is but the narrow spot he stands on, he 
knows not how and cares not why. Adversity will 
visit him as it comes upon all the sons of men, but 
what shall sustain him ? He has built his house 
upon the sand. When the winds blow and beat 
vehemently upon the house, what wonder that it 
falls ! Thus will life pass with him, — its blessings 
not half enjoyed, its lessons not understood, its 
duties yet unfulfilled. Death will come to convey 
him to another land which he is unfit to enter. He 
has not learned life in this world, how can he 
understand it in another ? 

Having thus far spoken of the nature, the causes, 
and the consequences of indifference to religion, it 



26 SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



remains to say a few words by way of conclusion 
upon the remedy. 

Let a man reflect a little upon the nature of reli- 
gion itself. Let him ask what is it, whence is it, 
and what does it profess to teach ? If he ask these 
questions seriously, he will find that religion is not 
a matter to be made light of, or one on which man 
can be " neither hot nor cold," but one of the 
highest moment, which awakens the deepest feel- 
ings of the heart, and satisfies the sublimest aspi- 
rations of the soul. He will find that it is not an 
invention of the priest, sought out to give him a 
little brief authority over other men's weaknesses, 
but something that grows naturally out of the in- 
finite faculties of man ; that it is no less a want of 
every man than his daily bread. Let him look 
down into his heart and see if there is not a want 
which all the things of earth never can satisfv, and 
a desire which looks upward for the infinite Father 
and takes pleasure in worshipping, adoring him. 
Let him look backward upon his life and consider 
how he has grown up to his present stature, what 
wants he has had, what difficulties he has been 
aided through, what dangers he has shunned, not 
by his own might, but by a mysterious Providence 
which wisely holds the scales of life — and has led 
him safe through all. Let him consider how his 
dearest plans have never been thwarted but to 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



27 



give him some greater blessings than he looked 
for, and how curiously this every-day life of his is 
fashioned and woven by the Almighty for wisest 
ends, and can he be indifferent still ? Can any 
one after a consideration of these matters fail to 
feel his heart moved within him with deep reli- 
gious emotions ? While he is musing, the fire will 
burn. Let one whose faith is growing cold, and 
still more the indifferent man, contemplate this 
Christianity which he passes over and dismisses so 
coolly. Will he not find therein something which 
satisfies his longings, which is so true to his 
nature that it encourages all his best feelings, his 
highest aspirings, — everything, in short, which be- 
comes a man, — and only forbids, and that mildly, 
whatever interferes with his completer manliness 
and prevents him in the discharge of duty and the 
way toward happiness. 

When one thus contemplates Christianity, he 
will find that he cannot be indifferent to it. True, 
his opinions may differ from those of most of his 
fellows, if he has attempted to reproduce the spirit 
of Christianity within himself ; and no man can pass 
judgment upon it fairly, or pretend to understand 
it, till this is done. But this is necessarily the 
case with independent minds. No two have the 
same idea of Christianity, for the reason that no 
man understands the whole of it, but each only 



28 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



some fraction thereof. When one thus considers 
his nature, wants, hopes, undefined longings, and 
the nature of Christianity, its relation to him, and 
its perfect fitness to his better nature, can he be 
indifferent, caring for none of these things ? 

It is said that Liberal Christianitv, as our doc- 
trines are sometimes called, promotes spiritual in- 
difference. It is admitted that we make no appeals 
to mean and selfish principles, present no eternal 
terrors to the eves of men ; but is spiritual indif- 
ference caused by the absence of such appeals and 
such fears ? Jesus himself addressed only men's 
divinest principles ; no vulgar selfishness was 
pressed into the service. What can there be in 
our doctrine which could encourage indifference ? 
We know it is a doctrine which kindles the wise 
and good, which goes with the ignorant and the 
wretched, redeeming them from the bondage of 
superstition, and from sin, and enabling them to 
bear cheerfully the manifold burdens of life. It 
encourages men in life ; it strengthens them calmly 
to pass away, saying, like martyred Stephen, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." 

Yet pure as our faith may be, kindling as are 
the hopes it awakens, the prevision it imparts, it is 
lamentable that there is so much of spiritual in- 
difference among us. It is sadly the truth that 
saving here and there a sainted few, Christianity 



SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENCE. 



29 



made for man, sent down by God for his blessing, 
does not bring forth half of its just fruits. There 
is enough of sanctimonious looks, enough attention 
perhaps to the appearance and form of godliness, 
but where is its power and spirit ? There are lis- 
teners in churches, eloquent voices proclaiming 
truth ; but does religion go to the market-place, 
the workshop, the fireside and fieldside ? Does it 
mingle in our every-day concerns ? Is it made real 
as life ? An ancient philosopher lighted a lamp by 
day, and in the streets of a populous city sought for 
a man, a complete, true man ; but he did not find 
one. Should he make the experiment now, and 
look for a true man, who is the only true Chris- 
tian, would he find one ? Would it be you or 
I ? Why not ? 



1837. 



III. 



TRANQUILLITY. 



Take heed, and be quiet. — Is a. vii. 4. 

A meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great 
price. — 1 Peter iii. 4. 



VERY age is marked by a peculiar spirit, — a 



' spirit of its own ; for there are various ele- 
ments in humanity, and each one must be developed 
in its turn. Hence we find that there are as many 
different epochs in the history of the human race 
as there are master ideas in the mind of the indi- 
vidual man. Every age therefore will have some 
virtues unknown to its predecessors, will manifest 
some vices which they had not, and be wanting in 
some quality previously unfolded. 

The present age is marked by restless activity. 
Ours is an age of little enterprises, which every 
man undertakes by himself and carries fiercely on- 
ward. u The carpenter encourages the smith, and 
he that smootheth with the hammer him that smites 
the anvil." There is no rest ; all is full of outward 
life. Commerce has multiplied her wings. The 




TRANQUILLITY. 



31 



prurient eye of curious research looks into every- 
thing. Old things are forgotten ; every man asks 
of his neighbor for some new thing. Nothing is 
good enough. What satisfied our fathers, men of 
stout hearts, only excites our contempt. " We will 
change all that," is the cry. Improvement is the 
word. Onward, without stop, is the index of the 
present day. 

Amid many virtues never before called out there 
is one crying fault which shows itself everywhere. 
In little enterprises no less than in great it lifts its 
head. The villager and the village both share it ; 
none is so humble as not to catch the contagion. 
The State is not out of its reach. It affects men of 
business, making their step more hurried, their 
countenance more deeply careworn ; it reaches men 
of speculation, their thoughts circling in madder 
eddies than before ; it seizes religious men, making 
them then mere men of religion, or mere religion- 
ists, thinking that there is only religion in the world, 
and time has no duties, save that of escaping out 
of it. I scarcely need say that this fault is rest- 
lessness, a want of calmness and tranquillity. It 
belongs eminently to our times. There has not 
been an age since the great flood when men were 
so restless, so foreign to all spirit of calmness 
and tranquillity. Man ceases from the labor of 
to-day only to rush the more eagerly into that of 



32 



TRANQUILLITY. 



to-morrow. Be the present field never so pleasing, 
the eye says, " To-morrow to fresh fields and pas- 
tures new." 

This restless, over-active spirit has not come up- 
on us all at once ; it has been long advancing. 
You may trace its progress with perfect distinctness, 
rising like a little stream, in distance and obscurity, 
gradually collecting force from small tributaries 
until it becomes a mighty stream, leaping and rush- 
ing on with scarce the possibility of restraint. . In 
very olden times, the opposite spirit prevailed. 
Three thousand years ago there was none of this 
feverish excitement. Enthusiasm like that of our 
times was quite unknown. The spirit of repose, 
with his broad wings, hung like manifold night 
over the face of humanity. Man was cool to his 
heart; he went forth under the broad sky and in 
the neighborhood of vast mountains ; he sat under 
the mysterious shade of primitive religion, new in 
the world, as yet a stranger therein, as it were 
looking backward and upward to the heaven he 
seemed to have left. Thus was it with man in the 
days of Abraham and Moses, and of Babylon. The 
individual was cared little for, the man was noth- 
ing ; the State was all. Only great enterprises were 
undertaken, and these of gigantic greatness never 
equalled since. Then rose the pyramids ; then 
three millions of Hebrew slaves rose like one man 



TRANQUILLITY. 



33 



to cross a desert and settle in a distant land ; then 
conquerors of old assembled their armies, large as 
whole nations. All was marked with colossal great- 
ness, all conducted with the spirit of tranquillity. 
Like some vast river, broad and deep, without a 
ripple, yet with resistless strength, was the march 
of humanity then. 

In the spirit of calmness which marked those 
ancient times there is much to admire, much which 
might well be mingled with the more boisterous 
spirit of these latter days. It is not the sleep of 
ages, but its repose, which we need. Since man has 
advanced to his present stage, it should not be that 
he has lost tranquillity, but has gained enthusiasm. 

The spirit of tranquillity is the spirit of strength. 
This is abundantly shown in the works of Nature. 
All the great works in the wide world are done 
without noise or tumult ; there is no haste any- 
where, though there is no sloth. God's Spirit, every- 
where active, is nowhere noisy. All over the world 
great matters are passing to completeness, there is 
the mark of resistless power going quietly to its 
work, never fearing to come short of its object, and 
so without haste. The earth traverses her course 
with a mighty speed, yet so quiet withal that the 
sleeping infant is not disturbed, nor an 7 'nsect 
jostled from his perch. Light comes to us with 
uncounted swiftness, but so tranquilly at the same 

3 



34 



TRANQUILLITY. 



time that it ruffles not the air, harms not the soft 
eyeball of him who welcomes it. All the great 
works in Xature are gradually and without tumult 
brought about. Silentlv and slow the oak comes 
forth from the dark ground; inch by inch, year 
after year, century in, century out, it grows silently, 
while men sleep, till at last it stands a firm pillar, 
upright and strong. That which has grown up in 
a moment soon sees an end. If Jonah's gourd grew 
up in a night, in a night too it perished. Through- 
out Xature we find that the creative work is all 
done in calmness ; only destruction, and that but 
rarely, is effected with haste and violence and noise, 
as the pulling down of a house is always a more 
noisy work than putting it up. Calmly and slow 
it is that millions of little creatures are working 
together on the floor of the ocean and building up 
new worlds where man shall one day dwell, and 
cities rise. Thus everywhere in Xature there is 
tranquillity. True, there are exceptions : the storm 
convulses the face of the ocean ; but it is only its 
face that is disturbed, the water sleeps calm below 
and knows no storm. True, clouds shut out the 
stars ; but they are humble clouds, that come not 
near the lights they hide, and tarry but a brief 
space. This calmness of Xature is beautiful ; it 
should sink into the heart of man, teaching him a 
lesson of composure and tranquillity. Thus was it 



TRANQUILLITY. 



35 



that holy men of old walked with Nature all their 
days, composed their spirits in her mysterious pres- 
ence and drank instruction from the stars, the sun, 
and trees, and grew calm like them. 

This spirit of tranquillity affects likewise great 
minds. Great men are the calmest of all the chil- 
dren of humanity. True, in their nonage, before 
experience had somewhat cooled the hot desires of 
youth, like other men they were impetuous, dis- 
turbed ; but when their true manhood comes, then 
are thev calm. If we look into the great volume of 
the chronicles of man, which reveal how much of 
his high nature he has yet unfolded and lived, we 
shall find those men who have most of all moulded 
human destiny, writing their own characters on the 
coming time, ruling, not over men's bodies, but in 
their minds, and thus perpetuating their influence 
till thought shall die out and humanity expire. 
"We shall find that all of these high spirits have 
been men of tranquillity, — never noisy, obtrusive, 
impetuous, fearful lest their name be forgotten ; 
for they cared not for self, not trembling lest the 
great cause of truth in their hands should come to 
an untimely end, for they knew it was God's cause, 
and would prevail. 

The greatest man of anv aee is not usuallv he 
who is so esteemed in his lifetime. Being by na* 
ture noiseless, he shuns mostly those pursuits 



36 



TRANQUILLITY. 



which win the admiration of the many who fancy 
that where there is much smoke there must be a 
bright fire (though the sun makes none), and 
think as schoolboys do of the vane upon the 
steeple, — that what is bright and glittering must 
needs be golden. The true inspired thinker of his 
times, he who has in him, most of all men, the 
spirit of the age, and, seeing farther than the pro- 
phetic eye of the general mind, has the principles 
of the coming age pre-existing in his heart, — he is 
found in quite other stations. He will often pass un- 
found by the lauded great men of the day, who are 
to be forgotten in the next generation. Doubtless, 
in Paul's time many a man who slumbered at his 
" long preaching," or passed him unheeded in the 
street, would have felt degraded if compared with 
the true inspired apostle. So, too, in Jerusalem 
Pilate was doubtless deemed greater than Jesus; 
yet now the Roman only lives as his executioner, 
while the words of that lowly man, untimely slain, 
are the words of life to uncounted millions. 

The thinker, — no man notices him save per- 
haps only a few admitted to his holy of holies, 
whose hearts burn within them while he speaks. 
His words will be softly whispered in a corner, not 
from fear, but because he fears not; yet in an- 
other age his golden words shall be collected and 
treasured in the minds of a chosen few, — them- 



TRANQUILLITY. 



37 



selves the giants of wisdom, only of a lesser stature 
than their master. They in turn bequeath them to 
others, till at last they are the common breath of 
all men, are made permanent in laws and steadfast 
in institutions. Thus the thoughts of one neglected 
by his own age and deemed ready to perish, re- 
form all the institutions of a coming age, and go 
down to the end of time, the most valuable treas- 
ure man bequeaths to his children. Thus was it 
with Moses, thus with Jesus, thus shall it be with 
all. 

Xow, how different the case of the unquiet, rest- 
less conqueror ! The great " man of seeming " is 
borne on the shoulders of his betters. His name 
circulates from mouth to mouth ; the world follows 
at his chariot-wheels ; and men fancy that his 
power and influence shall last till " death and 
night end all." Yet his power, what is it ? * He is 
but the servant, the humblest tool, to execute the 
purpose of some thinker of other times whose lofty 
idea, formed in profound tranquillity, he carries 
out with all this selfishness and noise and show. 
His power, how long shall it last ? It is well 
imaged in rt his canvas city of a camp," to-day all 
loud with life, to-night " all struck and vanished, a 
few earth-pits and heaps of straw." Thus goes it 
with the world ; the stillest water is the deepest. 
The most tranquil man is he who will make the 



38 



TRANQUILLITY. 



mark on the world which all time shall never 
erase. There is no empire like thought. The mind 
that moulded the destinies of to-day stood unnoticed 
in his tranquil thought two thousand years ago. 
How calmly now is beating in some obscure recess, 
all unknown to the world, that heart which shall 
set the life-pulses all thrilling in the next millen- 
nium ! Now is the age when thought bears fruit. 
The king is a feeble man compared to the gifted 
son of God, the man of heavenly and tranquil 
genius. Men's actions are governed by moral, not 
material power ; and that is always calm. How 
noiseless is thought ! No rolling of drums, no 
tramp of squadrons, or immeasurable tumult of 
baggage-wagons attends its movements. The time 
may come when Napoleon himself will be better 
known by his laws than his battles, and the victory 
of Waterloo prove less momentous than the open- 
ing of the first Mechanics' Institute. 

True greatness, then, is always calm, tranquil. 
It is the spirit which is tranquil ; only the fleshly 
passions are impetuous. The good man is calm no 
less than the great ; while the wicked are like the 
angry sea, which cannot rest. 

Let us now give a practical direction to our 
meditations. If all the great works of Nature are 
conducted in the spirit of tranquillity, it is for our 
edification ; for the volume of Nature is the first 



TRANQUILLITY. 



39 



gospel which, if men read, they "would not need the 
latter, — at least they could not misunderstand it. 
Nature, then, in her calm spirit reads us the broad 
lesson, " Be calm." If likewise all the great men 
of God's peculiar choice, — they who have incar- 
nated the most of omnipotence and lived it out in 
their lives, — if great minds are calm, is there not 
a lesson for this man and that, for you and me, and 
each of us ? All Xature crieth for our instruc- 
tion. Wisdom cries, and understanding utters her 
voice to all men, and thus she speaks : First, be 
tranquil in business. Why should a man ever be 
impetuous, — a reasonable man, I mean ? Hath not 
God given thee enough of time to do thy duty in ? 
Most certainly there is nothing scantily given in 
the administration of the All-bountiful ; but all 
creatures have enough, and time is surely plenti- 
fully bestowed. But even if time were scanty in 
measure ; if you are called to the difficult problem 
to do the most in the least possible time, — tran- 
quillity is the minister that will lend you the most 
efficient aid. What unmeasured superiority does 
the calm man possess in the way of business over 
the hot and impetuous ! The tranquil sees things 
just as they are, meditates upon them, — for it is 
only calm water that is capable of reflection, — 
then calls his energies to the task ; the blows fall- 
ing in the right place, the work is done. The 



40 



TRANQUILITY. 



unquiet man sheds his strength like rain upon the 
rock, and effects nothing but noise. Thus it is in 
every work ; a calm mind is worth a score of fierce 
hands going without counsel to work. The mer- 
chant, the artist, the husbandman, — all need this 
gentle spirit of tranquillity, that so " all things 
may be done decently and in order." 

Xot less is tranquillity needed in thought than in 
action. Indeed, calm thought will tranquillize the 
most rapid action ; for tranquillity consists not in 
slowness, but in self-rule and self-composure ; and 
so the want thereof is manifested not in swiftness, 
but in hurry and confusion. The calmer a man's 
thought, the more rapid may his action be. Per- 
haps there is nothing so much needed at this pres- 
ent time as tranquillity of thought. Men are so 
used to rapid action of the hands, to labor-saving 
machinery, that they fancy, or seem to do so, that 
all composed and careful thought is quite unneeded, 
" behind the times," as the phrase goes. How rare 
is it when one's opinion is asked upon any subject, 
no matter how difficult and deep the subject, nor 
how untried thereupon the person's mind, — how 
rare to hear one say, " I should like to think, I cannot 
make up my mind in a moment " ! A man may in- 
herit the gold of his father, but never his wisdom. 
Perhaps the world is wiser, taken at large, than it 
was at other times ; but every man is born at the 



TRANQUILLITY. 



41 



very foot of the ladder of learning, and must win 
all the way up alone, and only tranquil thought will 
aid him in this. There is a noisy way of seeking 
after truth, by talking loudly about it, and decrying 
those who think differently from one's self. To 
such seekers truth, which is of no sect or party, 
gives no answer, shrouding itself in darkness. 

But above all is tranquillity needed in all that 
relates to religion. Haste, violence, are utterly op- 
posed to the calm, noiseless spirit of religion. True 
religion is always calm and gentle. One does not 
hear its voice obtrusive in the streets ; the bruised 
reed it breaks not, so gentle is it; the smoking 
flax it doth not quench, so calm is its spirit of for- 
bearance. In thinking upon religious concerns, let 
all haste and violence and impetuosity be laid aside ; 
then if at no other time should men be calm. The 
Comforter who revealeth all needful things, the 
Spirit of truth, was likewise the Spirit of peace. 
The Spirit of God, giving power to his Son without 
measure, came down in the calm likeness of a 
dove, the symbol of tranquillity. What a beautiful 
meaning is herein ! It shows that the kingdom 
of heaven is not to be taken by violence, but by 
gentleness ; only for composed souls can there be 
peace. Well is the highest object we seek called 
rest for our souls. 

In all religious exercises, when piety with open 



42 



TRANQUILLITY. 



face looks up to God, and when in the stillness of 
solitude thou art alone with God, let there be calm- 
ness. No fierce swelling of the heart should dis- 
turb the clear vision of the soul ; no undue passion 
or haste should impede the power of prayer. It was 
not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the 
fire, that the Almighty spoke, but in the still small 
voice. This it is which, far before all pomp and 
circumstance of worship, rising incense-like out of 
the deep places of the heart, comes up to God. As 
it is the still flame which streams highest to heaven, 
so is it the calm, tranquil spirit of religion which 
rises highest and soars longest and is most blessed 
in its flight. It was in calmness that Enoch walked 
with God ; in peace that God took him. In the 
midst of temptation and abuse and danger stands 
Jesus. Enemies assault, yet the same unaltered 
calmness endures. Death approaches in most fright- 
ful shape, yet his calm spirit says, " I am not alone ; " 
and the angel of beautiful tranquillity comes down 
to aid, and wipe the death-sweat from off that 
throbbing brow. Thus, Christians, shall it be with 
you and me. The most tranquil force is always the 
mightiest. We too shall have temptation, danger, 
and abuse ; but for us that same calmness will come 
if we, like Jesus, seek for it. For us likewise there 
is the day of doom. Behind us we must leave the 
shining city of life, must stand beside the last 



TRANQUILLITY. 



43 



watch-fire of time, with visible darkness stretch- 
ing out before ; but even then, if rightly we use 
our gifts, shall calmness whisper words of peace, 
and our eye rest upon brighter worlds, fair shining 
in their exceeding tranquillity, in the life we go 
to meet. 

When the ark had long floated upon the waters, 
and the deluge had finished the work of the Al- 
mighty, he called upon his angels to go down and 
cause the waters to abate from off the face of the 
earth, and the fair verdure to return thereto. The 
angel of violence exclaimed, " Send me ; " and all re- 
plied, " He is most fit for such a mission, demand- 
ing a rude and fierce spirit." And so the angel of 
violence went down. He called together the winds 
to sweep the waters from the earth. The storm 
howled. Up rolled the frantic waters, in mad waves. 
Fitfully the storm-clouds rushed together. Light- 
ning glared wildly, the deep thunder chiming awful 
in. But not a drop of water disappeared ; even the 
long-tried ark had like to founder. Weary with 
this confusion, the angel of violence soon went back ; 
and the Almighty sent down the spirit of calmness. 
Slowly the angel came down on his dove-like pin- 
ions, the olive branch in his hand, love smiling out 
of his eyes, peace enlightening his face. At a single 
wave of his olive branch the storm lulled away into 
a low murmur of peace. The loud chiming of the 



44 



TRANQUILLITY. 



waves became a gentle ripple. Softly the sun came 
forth ; and on the bosom of the retreating cloud 
shone the rainbow of promise, the fair token of 
hope, the emblem that tranquillity shall ever pre- 
vail. The ark rested, and the delivered came forth, 
singing, " Blessed be God, and the strong spirit of 
tranquillity ; the meekest is ever the mightiest." 



1837. 



IV. 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN. 



All things are yours. — 1 Cor. iii. 21, 22. 
HE design of the apostle was to tell his Corin- 



thian friends that if they worked according 
to the law of God they need not depend upon par- 
ticular teachers, places, or possessions for instruc- 
tion or for happiness ; for all things in this world, 
all in the world to come, were theirs. The world, 
the whole mass and body of men, will be your 
teachers, — not Paul and Cephas alone. You will 
gain instruction from all. Life with all its trials 
will be a blessing. Death will be your victory 
and time of rejoicing. Things present and things 
to come, — that is, all the goods of this world, its 
objects grand and beautiful, its health, its honors, 
— all are yours. Your instructors, your benefac- 
tors, and the whole of the world to come, shall in 
like manner be yours. In a word, all things will 
be yours ; and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. 
Thus the soul made perfect might be likened to a 
building of which God was the architect and Chris- 
tianity the foundation ; the world, its wealth and 




46 TEE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN 

pleasures, its afflictions and trials, the subordinate 
workmen ; faith, hope, and love, the pillars. 

The doctrine of this discourse, then, is that all 
things in the world belong to every man who can 
use them. All are made for each. Man has vari- 
ous desires, and all can find satisfaction. The 
senses have wants ; food and raiment are supplied. 
There are objects of wonder for the fancy, for the 
world is sown with wonders. For the understand- 
ing there are subjects of thought without number. 
There is truth for the reason, love for the affec- 
tions, and God for the soul. Each man may pos- 
sess all of these, and yet exclude no other man. 
He that has eyes may enjoy all that is beautiful ; 
he that can hear may share all that is melodious. 
So far as he enjoys it, it is his, in the true and 
proper sense of possession. One man has a fine 
house ; he has gay garments and costly carriages ; he 
has broad and beautiful lands, ships to the East and 
West. He calls them his property, and so they 
are, but not exclusively his. All that can see them 
have a property therein ; the passer in the street 
may call them his when he rejoices in their beauty. 
Nay, it often happens that he who possesses the 
legal title to call them his has in reality the small- 
est property in them. A blind man cannot say the 
beautiful pastures he owns are his, for he never 
enjoys them ; much rather do they really belong to 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH 21 AN. 47 

the cattle that graze therein, to the birds which 
sing amid the flowers, to the passer-by who rejoices 
in their beauty and freshness. The unenjoying 
owner is rather their keeper than their possessor. 

The same may be said of all other possessions 
which are not hoarded in secret. He who dis- 
tresses himself in his extreme thirst for gold, and 
delights to display his riches to the public eye in 
sumptuous buildings, in beautiful apparel, while he 
is racked with the care of these things, possesses 
less of real wealth than the poorest of the public 
who admires the show and rejoices in it. The ship 
of the merchant doth no less rejoice the uncon- 
cerned spectator when he sees its strength, its 
beauty, as it walks the waters like a thing of life, 
than the lawful owner thereof. The one has all 
the pleasure and none of the pain and anxiety. 

Yet many there are who envy the so-called 
owners of these treasures. All will admire the 
beautiful wings, the many-colored dress, of the but- 
terfly, but no one envies the dazzling insect. Why 
can we not rejoice equally in the gay and costly 
raiment which others wear ? Joseph had a coat of 
many colors. Why should not all his brothers 
render themselves happy by admiring the pretty 
show ? One arrays herself in costly jewels ; but 
has she an exclusive property in her shining treas- 
ure ? All eyes are gladdened by their lustre. 



48 THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAX. 



The wearer in reality sees less of the splendor than 
the unconcerned onlooker. Why should one envy 
another the privilege of pleasing the public eye ? 
As well might we envy the glow-worm his light, or 
the firefly his dazzling radiance. One man has 
built him a costly dwelling. Science has planned, 
art has erected it with consummate skill, and taste 
has adorned it with exquisite niceness. All men 
who see it may enjoy it with him whose name it 
bears. Why should that enjoyment be cut short 
by envy of him who affords it ? We look on the 
curious winding of a shell ; we admire its many 
colors, where the crimson and the sapphire unite; 
we wonder at its shape ; we joy in its beauty ; but 
who thinks of envying the snail whose house it is ? 

The same remarks will apply to almost every 
article of property on which the public eye rests. 
He who is a true and sound man in the city re- 
joices at the bales of goods he sees in the streets, 
in the great ships that bring us the fruits of other 
lands, in the wealth of the warehouse, in the splen- 
dor of the buildings, without dreaming of the 
ownership. In the country he may admire the 
beautiful landscape before him, — the cattle in 
the field, the trees in the orchard, the brooks in the 
meadows, the farmhouse which man has built, 
the flowers and corn he has planted, — asking no 
question as to the legal owners thereof. He may 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN 49 



say, All these are mine. Indeed, all things belong 
to him who has a sense to perceive them and a hu- 
man heart to feel. The rose in the garden wafts 
its fragrance to the boy in the street ; it is as 
grateful to him as to the man in whose garden it 
grows. A contented heart is a continual feast. 
To him who possesses this and open senses to en- 
joy, all things belong. For him the merchant sends 
his ships afar ; for him the artist toils with busy 
hand ; for him avarice lays up its stores, and gran- 
deur exhibits its magnificence; for him Jezebel 
tires her head, adorns her face, and arrays her in 
jewels ; for him are groves planted and fair houses 
built. The breath of morn, the rising sweet with 
song of earliest bird, the crimson twilight, are his, 
and he enjoys them. The strength of noonday is 
his. The sober majesty of evening, the awful 
solemnity of night, all are his. 

Now, every man may possess all these treasures 
on one condition, — that he is not selfish. When he 
looks round on all these objects, he may rejoice in 
them so long as he enjoys them without thinking 
of himself ; but the moment he says, " This inch of 
ground is mine, but that large domain is my neigh- 
bor's, would that were mine also ! " he has destroyed 
his enjoyment therein. He wishes to possess ex- 
clusively, and loses all which he really had. Repin- 
ing takes the place of pleasure ; want, of satisfaction. 

4 



50 THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN. 

The man is moody and discontented ; he has lost 
much in his desire for more, as two kings in their 
passion for universal empire have lost their true 
dominion. 

When Adam and Eve were formed, they stood 
alone in the world. Around them was the 
earth ; it was all theirs ; its mountains, its rivers, 
its plains, its little flowers, all were theirs. Above 
them was the unclouded heavens. The winds blew ; 
the sun shone ; the far stars glittered in their pure 
light. All was theirs. Was Adam richer than all 
his tribe ? Not so. Each man of us has an inheri- 
tance as broad. There is the same heaven and the 
same earth ; and it is all yours, as all was Adam's. 
It ministers to your senses, it gladdens your heart 
if you are wise and contented. You will not envy 
the property of the wealthy, for you are richer than 
he if you can enjoy more of his possessions than he 
himself. " Give me health and a day," says one, 
" and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous." 

" For us the winds do blow, 
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow. 
Nothing we see but means our good, 
As our delight or as our treasure ; 
The whole is either our cupboard of food 
Or cabinet of pleasure. 

" More servants wait on Man 
Than he'll take notice of : in every path 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN 51 

He treads down that which doth befriend him, 
When sickness makes him pale and wan. 
0 mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath 
Another to attend him." 1 

But if a man is selfish and desires to exclude 
others, he loses his own inheritance. He would 
enlarge, and he limits ; he would debar others, and 
he shuts out himself. Instead of rejoicing in all 
things, he takes no pleasure out of his own estates ; 
his own possessions are barren, little, and low, yet 
he counts them better than all the world besides. 
The true man has ownership of the sun; the selfish 
possesses only his own candle. The true man sees 
a brother everywhere, though in rags ; but the sel- 
fish has no kindred out of his own class. He was 
born the heir of all, but he has sold his birthright. 
Not satisfied with just possessions in all, he would 
shut out others, and so he has lost the best of his 
patrimony. A miser was once offered his hands 
full of a precious liquid ; to gain much, he opened 
wide his fingers and lost all. The world is full of 
such misers. What man among you is rich in this 
world's goods ? He who has most money, broadest 
lands, costliest houses, richest food and raiment ? 
No ; but he who has active senses, a sound mind in 
a sound body, a vigorous understanding, and, above 
all, a clean conscience and a contented and right- 

1 Herbert : Man. 



52 THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN 

eous heart. He is the truly rich in this world's 
goods, and he has the kingdom of heaven and all 
things added to him. All the world is his. It 
teaches him ; it affords him gratification. Not Paul, 
A polios, and Cephas alone, but all men are his, to 
instruct and to bless him. For him is virtue ; for 
him is religion ; for him is life, death, heaven, God. 

All things are yours if you are wise. How much 
does the wise man see to enjoy, to be grateful for ! 
The same world is unrolled before all men. The 
same measureless heaven overarches the wise and 
the unwise, Solomon and the beast he rides. What 
do different men see therein ? Each sees out of 
him what he has within him. The wise sees much 
and enjoys much ; the careless and the foolish see 
little and enjoy little. There is an old proverb, 
" He that would bring home the wealth of the In- 
dies must carry out the wealth of the Indies." 

All things are yours on condition that you know 
how to use them. The gates will only open to him 
who has the magic word. The wise man makes 
affliction his teacher by bearing it calmly. He con- 
quers sorrow by enduring it; he overcomes in the 
battle of life by Christian submission. If the out- 
ward things will not yield to his will, as to that of 
the strong man, he yields to them like the weak 
man, and is thereby the victor. Disappointment is 
his Apollos to teach resignation, success his Cephas 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN 53 

to impart his enthusiasm. Sorrow and stern expe- 
rience, but mingled with hopeful greetings, are his 
Paul to teach him brave self-denial, unfailing faith, 
and love which casts out fear. Things present are 
his ministers, in a glowing or a joyous face. Things 
past are his teachers ; for experience reveals her- 
self to his eyes and he learns wisdom by his failures, 
as the giants of old were the strongest when they 
fell. Death is his, for he has taken away its sting ; 
the grave is his, for he has taken from it the 
victory. 

To possess the world, we must be good. All 
things are yours not only on the condition that you 
are not selfish, but wise and good also. A man al- 
ways finds the world reflects his own feelings. To 
a man in a happy frame of mind, the very heavens 
seem to laugh ; all Nature wears a smile. To a 
man in sorrow, all appears melancholy. If he is 
peevish, all things seem to conspire to vex him. Is 
he in deep affliction ? His mind will hang the heav- 
ens in dim eclipse. 

" The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality." 

Nature and society always wear the colors of the 
spirit. To a man laboring under a calamity, the 
heat of his own fire hath a sadness in it. 



54 THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAX. 



The good man and the bad live, it is true, in the 
same world ; but since each man as it were creates 
the world for himself in his own image, the world 
which the good man calls Ms is vastly different 
from all that the selfish, foolish, or wicked man 
sees. A vain man, filled with egregious love of 
himself, finds all things either flattering him, and 
then he is pleased, or neglecting him, and then he 
is offended and is out of humor with his fellow-men. 
A selfish man mingles in society, in business, in 
labor with other men ; he gains nothing but self- 
love. But let a man go forth, forgetting as it were 
himself and caring somewhat for other men, he 
gains immeasurably ; he finds encouragement for 
his goodness, and he finds his reward. His good- 
ness enlarges ; his whole being expands. 

The apostle makes an application of these truths, 
" Therefore let no man glory in men." If all 
things, past, present, and to come, are yours, then 
how foolish to o-lorv in another man ; to chain 
your mind to his, to think just as he thinks, feel 
just as he feels, and act as he commands ! Paul 
advises his followers not to follow Cephas or 
Apollos, but Christ ; that is, not to rely exclu- 
sively on the words of these teachers, but to think 
for themselves, to gather their belief from Jesus 
himself. Paul goes still farther and exhorts them 
not to follow him any farther than he follows 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAN. 55 



Christ. He would have them follow what they 
pronounce right. A man is to determine for Mm- 
self what is true, what is good, what is holy ; then 
will his service be a reasonable service. No man 
can judge for another. We are not to depend on 
another for aid ; for since the world is before us, 
we are to labor for ourselves, to bear what is 
needful. We are not to depend on another for 
doctrine, to the exclusion of our own judgment. 
Try, examine, all the world of opinion, — Paul, 
Cephas, and Apollos, — but hold fast only to that 
which is the truth in Christianity. It is an ad- 
vantage to hear the opinions of a wise man, but if 
they are to be taken for commands, it is a serious 
evil. A good and wise man will be taught by one 
wiser than himself, not by his dictation, but by his 
suggestions ; he will not be commanded, but in- 
spired. The thoughts of one wiser than yourself 
are not to be placed in your mind, as bales of 
goods are trundled from warehouse to warehouse. 
Rather are they seeds, which you receive ; they 
will shoot forth in your mind and heart. In this 
they have a vigorous, in that a frail growth. They 
will thrive by care and perish by neglect. Men 
should listen to the words of the wise, should read 
them in the sacred word, and then follow what is 
right. No man, no number of men, can say to your 
conscience, " Thus far and no farther." All are 



56 THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAX. 



yours. Your own conscience is never to be hum- 
bled before all the advice of all the world. You 
are not to depend on another for religious truth. 
Reproduce religion in your own heart. The world 
looks dark to some eyes ; Providence is a mystery 
to them ; the Bible a sealed book ; they know not 
Jesus ; they do not understand Paul. But let them 
reproduce in their minds the thoughts of the apos- 
tles, the feeling of the Saviour, and light comes 
upon them. The veil is lifted from the world, 
the mystery removed from Providence, the seal 
is broken, and the book opened. It is then the 
book of life. The preaching of Paul, Cephas, and 
Apollos, nay, of Jesus, is but a foolishness or 
a stumbling-block, without their reproducing the 
religious sentiment within their own hearts. But 
with this, it is the power of life unto life. Any 
man is a Christian just so far as he reproduces the 
Christian spirit in his soul. 

If all are yours, be ashamed to neglect your in- 
heritance; be afraid to abuse it. The body is not 
alone to be cared for, but the soul. Not only are 
the senses to be pleased, but the conscience is to 
be obeyed, the affections nurtured, the religious 
sentiment cultivated. Life is to be wisely lived, 
its duties done, its pleasures enjoyed. Every one 
should say to himself, I will be the man ; I will 
make mv own inner world. What is anv man that 



THE WORLD BELONGS TO EACH MAX. 57 



is good which you cannot be? Was Abraham 
more faithful, Moses more meek than you can be ? 
Is Solomon wiser, Paul more earnest, or John more 
holy than you can be ? Surely not. All their 
goodness is but an example for you. Do you ad- 
mire their virtue, exult in their largeness of heart ? 
Why, then, are you vicious, self-indulgent, and be- 
littled ? The earth does not now produce different 
men from those of old time. Two or three men 
have not exhausted humanity. The brightest lights 
may not yet have shone. Be, then, ashamed of 
your littleness, of your small attainment in wisdom 
of the heart, in self-command, in devotion, in holi- 
ness of life. Set a lofty end before you to be at- 
tained. Let nothing short of perfect justice, truth, 
and holiness satisfy you. Then shall all things 
minister unto you. Your actual every-day life 
shall be the road to perfection; and your thoughts, 
hopes, wishes, feeling, shall be to you a ladder 
reaching to heaven, where angels ascend to carry 
prayers and descend to bring God's blessing and 
inspiration. 



1838. 



V. 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION UPON 



The fear of the Lord maketh a merry heart, and glveth joy and 
gladness and a long life. — Ecclesiasticus i. 12. 

T3 ELIGION appears on the earth in two legiti- 



mate forms, — that of a principle and that 
of a sentiment. Both are the results of instincts 
in our nature which naturally lead to and develop 
the one or the other. The principle of religion 
comes from conscience, or the moral sense, by 
which we feel obliged to do what is right and 
avoid what is wrong. The sentiment of religion 
comes from that somewhat in our nature which 
the Scriptures call faith, or which in common 
speech we call love of what is right, good, true, 
and lovely, — in a word, love of God. Religion 
then appears in one or other of these forms, ac- 
cording as the sense of duty alone or the love of 
what is right is brought out and made active 
in us. A few words may be said on each of these 
points, — the principle and the sentiment. 



THE FEELINGS. 




RELIGION UPON TEE FEELINGS. 59 



First, of the action of the principle of religion. It 
commands us whether we will or not. The sense 
of duty obliges us to do the acts it commands, not 
by taking away our freedom, it is true, but by say- 
ing with all the authority of God. " Thou ouditest 
to do this, thou must, thou shalt do it." Here the 
loveliness of virtue and a divine life, the ugliness 
of sin and a mean, wicked life, are not shown. 
This only is set forth : one must be embraced, the 
other repelled. Of course no appeal is made to the 
affections ; there is nothing to charm us. We 
have the strength of the law, not the beauty of the 
gospel. Here the will is brought into action, and 
made to do the work of the whole man ; the spon- 
taneous feelings of reverence, love, admiration, 
come not forward into action, but all goodness is 
self-denial. With most men of cold rational tem- 
perament, like ourselves, this is the first step in re- 
ligion. They see the moral law written in their 
nature ; they learn that all this life of ours is a 
commentary upon that law ; for the footprints of 
justice are wide and deep, in all the highways and 
bypaths of mortal life. If a man does a good 
deed, justice never gives up the search till she drops 
the recompense into his bosom. If he does wrong, 
vengeance never sleeps, but follows the man like a 
ghost, close as his shadow, till she overtakes hiin, 
There is no escaping God. The sinner knows that 
v he is pursued of justice. 



60 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



" Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turned round 
Moves not again his head, 
Because he knows an ugly fiend 
Doth close behind him tread," 

so he goes on his toilsome way. Now, there are 
many who pass for respectable and honest men, 
nay, who flatter themselves they are religious men, 
and would take sorely to heart any charge which 
made doubtful their right to a Christian name, — a 
whole page in the book of life, — whose religion is 
simply this : obedience to a law which they dislike 
because it lessens their gains, increases their chari- 
ties, puts a yoke on their animal appetites, and 
stimulates them to self-denial. It is obedience to 
a law they would avoid if it were possible ; for if 
a man admits not the excellence of a law, why 
should he obey it? Only because some exterior 
consideration compels him, either by law or terror. 
His obedience then is constrained either by fear of 
some personal evil or by the direct action of the 
sense of duty. He does what he feels he ought to 
do, though he does not love to do it. No doubt the 
man is blessed by obeying duty rather than the 
loose appetite which chances to be uppermost at 
the moment ; but still it is a very uncomfortable 
position, to wish one way and walk another. We 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 61 

might say the man was like one seated and 
bound upright on a horse, with his back toward 
the beast's head, looking one way and riding the 
other. 

Such certainly is the case with many respectable 
men. They seem bound unwillingly on the back of 
swift-moving duty to ride backward, not seeing 
whither they go, with all their wishes, appetites, 
hopes, and sincere prayers tending in the direction 
exactly opposite to that in which themselves are 
borne ; and not only this, but they mock at such as 
look forward. We see frequent examples of this 
doubleness of action in men and women, Such 
instances swarm in those churches where duty 
is preached more than love ; where fear is extrava- 
gantly appealed to, and made the master passion ; 
where the selfish passions are by no means put 
down, only called by bad names, condemned like 
Samson, blind and hungry in his prison-house, to 
work in darkness, and at the mill of their enemies. 
You see this whole story written on the faces of 
such men ; for a sagacious man can read your 
creed in your face as easily as in your catechism. 
All strong emotions write themselves out on the 
face ; so that seeing a friend after years' absence, 
you see what he is and what he has been doing. 
And religion, the very strongest of all emotions in 
most men, shows very quickly what form it takes, 



62 RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



whether it charms the man by love, or drives him 
with the knout of fear. Persons constrained to 
outside righteousness by the sense of duty alone, or 
worse, by fear, have just enough of religion to make 
them afraid. They are hanging in suspense be- 
tween heaven and hell ; they are not wholly dead, 
not quite alive. They need more religion to make 
them cheerful. Their heaven is all on the other 
side of the grave ; it should begin here, at least in 
the heart. They are perpetually in fear of hell, 
when they have been in it all their life long. 

Now, it were natural to suppose if religion were 
in conformitv with the laws of our nature, or more 

ml t 

especially in conformity with the higher laws of 
our higher nature, and thus in union with God, 
that the more we had thereof, the more cheerful 
we should be, the more happy, the more blessed. 
Our heaven would then begin as our religion began ; 
it would go on with it ; and our cheerfulness would 
be as apparent as the squirrels', and our blessedness 
seen as easily and as often as our face. This is the 
result of the true service. But to bring it about, 
you must love ivhat you serve ; you must see the 
excellence of the law which you obey, or else your 
obedience may be a curse, and certainly is quite an 
inferior blessing. You must obey freely, because 
you understand and prefer it ; you must obey joy- 
fully, because you love it, or it does you little good. 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



63 



So far as the principle goes, it does not touch the 
heart, only the conscience. It does not end the 
discord between conflicting passions, between hope 
and fear, appetite and duty. Man is not in love 
with religion, it is a master who commands his 
servile obedience, though for his good. It is not a 
bride whom he loves, and whom it is his pleasure 
to serve, and his repose to work for, and his self- 
respect to do homage unto. Since this is so, the 
man in this state seeks as much as possible to avoid 
religious acts. By this I do not mean rites, forms, 
and ceremonies, but good words, cheerful looks, and 
benevolent actions, — in short, a divine life. His de- 
sign is to do the least of all this, and at the same 
time to quiet conscience. His formula is, the mini- 
mum of charity and self-denial ; the maximum of 
selfishness and indulgence, — in short, to care the 
least for others and the most for self that con- 
science will allow. 

Then he sometimes contrives to cheat his con- 
science also, so the quality of goodness is diminished 
still farther. He is to purchase his salvation, he 
thinks, by giving up certain things he loves and 
doing certain things he hates, so he makes the best 
bargain he can, and does not cease to love the vice 
he avoids or hate the virtue he is obliged to prac- 
tise. Hence it comes to pass that persons called 
religious are often no better than others ; their 



64 RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



benevolent deeds are done from selfish motives. As 
neighbors, sons, husbands, fathers, daughters, and 
wives, they are no better than others not called re- 
ligious. They are stern and austere ; you may ad- 
mire, but you cannot love them. Examine the out- 
ward actions of a man of religious principle alone, 
by the rule and plummet, and suppose him true to 
this so far as he goes, you will perhaps find nothing 
to condemn or censure in the acts themselves, tried 
by this standard, but you will find a hardness, a 
cold-heartedness, in all of them. They do not render 
religion lovely. Such men have brought a scandal 
upon religion, so that some fancy it is dark and 
gloomy, clothing the face in weeds of weeping ; that 
it forbids amusement, gayety, and light-hearted joy ; 
that it sits among the tombstones, crying and cut- 
ting itself with stones. No wonder that young men 
and women, no wonder all not forced by extremity 
of outward sorrow, turn away with anguish and in 
bitterness of disappointment, saying, " If this be 
religion, give us none of it ; or if we must receive 
it, let it be put off till old age, that as we leave this 
world, we may take in our hand this staff, which 
may aid us hereafter, but which would overthrow 
us here." The reason of this is that these men of 
religious principle only have but taken the first 
step ; they are at the gate of Eden, amid the de- 
stroying and forbidding angels ; they have not en- 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 65 

tered the garden, nor tasted the tree of life, nor 
met the angel of welcome. Ifc is as unfair to judge 
religion by these men as it would be to judge of 
literature by seeing some awkward schoolboy in the 
agony of learning the alphabet, rather than by lis- 
tening to the golden words some eloquent scholar 
pours forth on his mount of inspiration, or the in- 
cense-cloud of music some poet sends up from his 
altar of fire. 

So far as men of this stamp of character go, they 
do not fulfil the text, and religion does not make 
their hearts merry nor give them joy or gladness. 
They hope it will give them eternal life, but surely 
they do not have the earnest of it now. Such is 
the general aspect of Christians in the length and 
breadth of our churches ; there are not manv who 
really love Christianity and a divine life as they 
love gain and trade. This Christianity does not 
affect their hearts and make them more manly and 
better ; and with them what is called a change of 
heart is a change for the worse, because a man 
thinks he has the whole of religion, and stops in 
the porch of duty, never feels the light within the 
temple, nor suns himself in the warmth of love. 

Xow, to go a step farther, religion affects the 
heart and feelings just as it affects the mind and 
the conscience. It leads to " a merry heart and 
joy and gladness," and real life of the best things 

5 



66 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



iii man. It gives tranquillity, or what the Sacred 
Scriptures call rest for the soul. What is the 
heart without religion ? It is a union of conflict- 
ing desires, each good in itself, but all easily 
running to confusion, unless there be some master- 
spirit to assign each its place and duty. It is like 
a band of musicians with instruments well attuned, 
but each playing on his own account, and no two 
attempting the same strain ; the result of this tor- 
rent of melodious notes is not harmony, but discord. 
Religion comes among them ; they all play stoutly 
as before, but under her guidance and in concert, 
and a cloud of harmony goes up to God to bless 
men while it lingers here. He then loves as a 
bride what before he served as a master. His love 
casts out fear. He would not do otherwise than 
obey the law of God. He is not disturbed by 
doubts of the present, still less by fears for the 
future. If his affairs go well, he rejoices in his 
success ; but if adversity overtake him with all his 
carefulness and obedience, — adversity which pru- 
dence could not foresee or care prevent, — he re- 
joices in that also with a merry heart. Out of the 
hard marble of life, the deposition of a few joys 
and many sorrows, of birth and death, smiles and 
tears, he hews him, without effort, the beautiful 
statue of religious tranquillity ; it stands always 
beside him with its smile of heavenly satisfaction. 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



67 



Without religion in the heart we seize the most 
fleeting things and count them as permanent ; 
and when they crumble to dust in our hands, we 
wonder that we are deceived! We had looked on 
success in our calling, the life of our friends, the 
health of our bodies, as the sovereign good ; but 
these all disappear. Alas for us, we cannot live 
well for this world unless made for much more 
than this world ! 

When one worships in the midst of us, young 
and beautiful and strong as the soundest, and a 
day after leaves her friends mourning round the 
place she has left vacant ; when we consider that 
the same affliction may befall any family at any 
time ; nay, that the next that is taken may be 
your sister, your husband, your child, yourself, — a 
sad feeling of insecurity comes over us. Not that 
we fear ourselves to die, — death is far less fearful 
than life, — but to live without those dearest to the 
heart, or to die and leave them to their sad lot. It 
is this which the heart without religion never can 
endure. Your mind and conscience cannot solve the 
difficulty ; they cannot alone give you the peace 
vou ask. You need the religious heart ; the will 
which asks nothing adverse to the will of God ; the 
absolute trust in God, which is greater than all 
hope. Our best affections turn sorrowfully away 
from things that perish, and cry with groans not 



68 RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



fully uttered, " Oh, give us something lasting, that 
is always the same, that we mav cling: round it 
forever and ever ! " The heart's religion gives you 
that something: : it tells vou that what is best never 
dies, never even changes : it tells you to see God, 
love him, love him through your friends while 
here, love him with nothing between you and him 
when they are gone. Do not ask particular things, 
wealth or poverty, sickness or health ; do your duty, 
and take what comes. Work for what God wishes, 
and your joy is achieved and your peace perfect. 
Without, there may be struggles, darkness, storms, 
but the house is all beautiful and tranquil within. 
The winds and the storms beat on that house, but 
it falls not. All men are seeking for this rest of 
soul, this tranquillity of repose. As the little lake 
of life is tossed into tumult, worldly men call on 
their gods. — on wealth, on pride, on their own 
strong will, — " Stay us this tempest ; bring us to 
the land ; give us peace ! " But, alas ! it will not be. 
The wail of the chilling storm is as wild as ever, 
and waxes still louder : and the sea of sorrow 
swells more tempestuous. Meantime religion sleeps 
on its pillow and knows nothing of the storm. 
For those who in weakness eo to this true de- 
liverer and say, " Lord, save us, or we perish," that 
sweet spirit rises with heaven in its look, and de- 
liverance in its hand, and the waves are still, the 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 69 

tossed bark is at the shore. Well may we say, 
" The winds and the sea obey it." For what are 
the swellings of the Atlantic to the restless anguish 
of a disturbed heart ? What the wailing of the 
storm to the agony of doubt, distress, remorse for 
the past, and fear for the future ? There is no 
calmness so serene, no peace so deep, as religious 
tranquillity ; it works the transfiguration of the man. 
He who knows it not by his inward experience can 
be told nothing of it by all our words ; but whoso 
has felt it knows that words like a prophet's 
speech cannot image forth the starry deeps of its 
serene delight. All the world is seeking for this 
tranquillity. Why will men so disquiet themselves 
about petty things of no concern to any, least to 
themselves, and leave this great reality all un- 
touched, never turn aside to see this great sight 
and enjoy the highest gift God can bestow on man ? 
This religious tranquillity is the birthright of you, 
my fellow-sinner, and each of us ; it falls like 
manna from heaven, they may gather who will. 
Yet who has it ? There runs a story of religious 
tranquillity to this effect. 

Nathan ben Elim was a poor basket-maker at 
Bagdad, with a limping foot and a single eye. 
Dwelling in a dirty lane, the poorest of the desti- 
tute, he won a scanty bread for himself, his sickly 
wife, and decrepit father. Early and late was Na- 



70 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 



than at his toil. His frame was bent by labor ; his 
face seamed by want. Poverty and much distress 
were writ on all around him. Yet his face was a 
sunbeam ; and the song of cheerfulness ever went 
up from his lips as he brought or carried his light 
wares on his head for sale. Mahomet, the servant 
of God, had often met Nathan in the bazaar ; he 
was struck with the cheerful repose that smiled out 
of his rent garments, and made poverty respectable. 
One day he sought the poor basket-maker as he sat 
in the only room of his house, and wove his rushes, 
intending to give alms to a man so deserving. 
" What makes thee so happy ? " said the unrecog- 
nized prophet. " Thou art poor and ignorant and 
often sick ; yet thy face is like Gabriel's. Tell me 
the art to be blessed." " Stranger," said the basket- 
maker, " thou talkest like a silly woman. I have 
but one eye, but he that has none may see how to 
be blessed. Why should not I be happy ? True, I 
have suffering enough and poverty ; true, my five 
children have died all before me, the last but forty 
days ago, slain by ruffians. True, my work is hard, 
and my wife a shrew whom Job and Moses and 
Solomon could not suffer, nor Gabriel tame with 
a beam of gentleness. Still, why should not I be 
blessed ? Three things only make up my peace : 
to be what God pleases, though poor and lame and 
blind ; to do, though hungry and bare, my daily 



RELIGION UPON THE FEELINGS. 71 



duties without distrust ; and to have a good religious 
heart. A baby could have told you this." The 
prophet said, " 1 came to relieve thee, and am now 
blessed by thy sickness. I have been up to the 
seventh heaven, but thou hast seen God ; " and he 
fell down and kissed Nathan's feet, calling him 
" wisest and greatest and most favored of the sons 
of men." 



1840. 



VI. 



THE APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO 



/ will shew thee my faith by my works. — James ii. 18. 



LIE good apostle means, I will show you my 



religion by my life. Your attention is asked 
to a sermon on the application of religion to life. 
This principle may be laid down as not likely to be 
called in question by a sane man ; namely, that a 
thing is of no value unless it serve some purpose 
or can serve some purpose. At least the apostle 
was of this opinion. He thought the end of reli- 
gion was its application to life ; and unless it was 
thus applied, he doubted if the religion itself ex- 
isted, knowing that it is not natural for man to be- 
lieve one way and live another way. Now, if religion 
in general may be applied to life, the Christian re- 
ligion especially is capable of this application, for 
it grew out of the divine life of a man, and was 
evidently lived before it was believed. Christianity 
by common consent has been called the best of all 
religions. If it deserve that name, it must have a 



LIFE. 




APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 73 

direct and powerful influence on life. We affect to 
embrace this best of all religions. It has become 
part of our common law. Its name is everywhere 
among us. Yet how much better is our life than 
that of the Mahometan, the Pagan ? Take away 
the somewhat of refinement that comes from our 
superior intellectual culture, and how much are we 
better than they ? The demand of Christianity is 
heavenly-mindedness while you live on earth ; to do 
all for the glory of God ; to love your neighbor as 
yourself, — which in plain English means, enjoy 
nothing from which you would improperly debar 
your neighbor ; love God with your whole heart ; 
are you strong in mind, soul, body, affections, 
health, — thank God and help men who are weak 
in respect to these. This is the Christian standard 
of life. Yet high as this standard is, our life, it is 
confessed on all hands, is little better than that of 
the heathen. The reason is plain. We have made 
a separation between religion and life, between faith 
and works ; or rather we do not attempt to apply 
religion in all respects to life, or wish to do so. It 
is not a common rule with men to apply Christian- 
ity to all things with which they have to do. It is 
not so common that men are false to their real 
principles as it is that the principle is wrong. 
While they are busy in trading, their religion re- 
mains quietly at home, or in the church, it may be, 



74 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

where they left it last Sunday. It may be their 
Christianity " is talking or is pursuing a journey, 
or peradventure it sleepeth and must needs be 
awaked." The cause of all this is plain. Many 
men do not wish to apply religion to life ; for if 
they did, their religion would go with them every- 
where, and be found in the counting-room as well 
as the church, and would hardly require the Sunday 
bell to waken it weekly from dull repose. 

Now, there are three ways in which religion may 
be applied to life, — individually, socially, and politi- 
cally ; that is, by men acting independently, each 
for himself, by men acting in large bodies, and by 
men acting in nations. This seems to have been 
the natural and historical order in which Christian- 
ity came and grew up. First, it was the life of Jesus, 
dwelling in one single heart and shown forth in his 
action. Next, it lighted up the soul of a small 
number, — the real disciples, James, John, and 
Peter, and warm-hearted women, who seem to have 
anticipated even John and Peter, and to have soared 
above their heads far away into the heaven of 
Christianity. Next, from this small body it spread 
to larger numbers, and was last embraced by the 
State and by whole nations ; but just in proportion 
as it spread wide, it became shallow. The disciples, 
even John and Paul, felt it not as Jesus did ; they 
did not so fully apply it to life. Nor did the large 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 75 

bodies, the nations, feel it a thousandth part so 
much as those flaming apostles. Had this been so, 
the work had been all done, and you and I had 
been born not to wail over the miserv and sin 
wherewith life is crowded full, or to seek to stay 
the whelming tide, or lift our own heads above it ; 
we should have been born to better bliss than we 
fancy that Adam experienced in the fable, before 
the fall. 

But Christianity is not applied to life extensively 
in these three relations, politically, socially, or in- 
dividually. By applying it politically is meant, in 
the intercourse of nation with nation, or in the ac- 
tion of the nation's laws upon the people them- 
selves ; socially, by the various societies and bodies 
of men that exist for certain purposes not political ; 
individually, by each man acting for himself, in his 
own way. 

First, it may be taken for granted that attempts 
are very rarely made to make a political application 
of Christianity to life. One needs but half an eye 
to be convinced of this fact. But if all nations 
would make a thorough application thereof, it would 
work a change hitherto without precedent in the 
affairs of man. How many institutions would go 
at once to the ground ! How would armed fleets 
be heard of no more ! and castles and forsaken 
forts and barricaded walls would stand like the 



76 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

pyramids, looking foolish enough, — monuments of 
barbarism passed away and of savagery forgot. 
Brazen-mouthed cannons, which sacrilegious hands 
have formed from church bells, would be trans- 
formed anew, and would call men, not to war and 
murder, but to peace and love once more. Arsenals 
would be changed into barns ; and blameless sheep 
and oxen might find their cribs where stands of 
arms now press the ground. Soldiers who, in every 
land but our own, affront the sun with red coats 
and gilt epaulets, the " bravery of their tinkling or- 
naments," would go back to the honorable work of 
tilling the soil and bearing with ready and clean 
hands the great burden of society. Not only this, 
but national governments would become very simple 
affairs, and would perhaps consist of a few clerks 
at the Capitol, with a moderate salary, whose office 
would be to keep the books of the nations and do 
the honors of the place to strangers, and recipro- 
cate the good feeling of the similar clerks in other 
nations, and so keep up a good understanding 
the world over. Then, instead of an army of office- 
holders, greedy to keep their station, and a larger 
army of office-wanters greedy to get a situation, 
each man might attend to his own business. Thus 
being free from idle or unprofitable hands, there 
would be no empty mouths nor backs unclothed, 
still less any man crippled by toil and shortened 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 77 

of half his days by excessive work, while another 
swelled into gouty luxuriance and died of inaction. 
Men say this cannot be done now ; that Christianity 
cannot be applied politically as yet, because all the 
nations would not agree to it, and if one alone 
made the experiment, that undefended nation would 
be but a dove amid a thousand hawks. No doubt 
there is some truth in this remark. A religious 
nation in a world of irreligious nations would be 
like a Christian man among knaves in common life, 
— mocked at, imposed upon, and occasionally plun- 
dered. Yet if each man had waited until all his 
neighbors were religious before he gave in his ad- 
hesion to Christianity, the world had been Pagan 
as a race till this day. 

The world has seen very few attempts to make 
a political application of religion to life. One was 
the well-known case of the good Quaker, William 
Penn. Here it was made under circumstances the 
most disadvantageous, — made with bloody savages. 
Yet what was the result ? The Quaker and the 
savage lived together in peace. One drop of Quaker 
blood never reddened the Indian's knife. The 
treaty he made with the naked savages, as Vol- 
taire has said with righteous sarcasm, was the only 
treaty ever made between Christian and savage 
without an oath, and the only one ever kept. He 
might have added, the only one the Christian ever 



78 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

meant to keep longer than it was convenient. Xo 
one knows how it would turn out if any one nation 
were to make the experiment. Government is not 
designed to promote the growth of goodness and 
religion, nor can it be ; it is mainly concerned 
with physical things. The object of political action 
is limited to two things ; namely, to prevent crime, 
and to prevent poverty. But these evils can only 
be prevented by a close adherence to God's law ; 
in other words, by the political application of reli- 
gion to life. Whence come the evils that disturb 
even our own nation ? Because we have forsaken the 
natural law of God. Whence come the evils so deep 
and dreadful that oppress like an incubus the old 
nations of the world ? Alas ! from the same cause, 
— from centuries of disobedience, from ages of folly, 
ages of crime. The misery of society is always but 
the handwriting on the wall : " Thou art weighed 
in the balance and found wanting." 

Again, extensive attempts are not made to ap- 
ply religion to life socially, though perhaps we do 
more in this respect than other nations. We are 
so accustomed to its evils that we do not think 
of them. We do not look on almshouses and 
asylums, and ask how men are become poor in a 
civilized land, in a Christian land, while more suffer 
from want than among savages. We do not look 
on our jails and ask why its inmates are there, and 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE, 79 

what circumstances forced them to crime. We do 
not look on the fact that seventeen men out of the 
score have the fear of poverty before them all their 
life, while God made enough and to spare for the 
whole world. We do not consider that three 
fourths of men and women, as things now are, toil 
of necessity so large a portion of their time that noth- 
ing is left for improvement, — absolutely nothing 
for intellectual improvement. This state of things 
is so common that men look on it as natural, as a 
law of God, — as if labor, which God meant for 
each, should hinder improvement in mind, growth 
in stature, which God meant for all. It is a good 
thing no doubt that one man in the thousand 
should have a masterly education, sufficient to 
bring out what is in him, and revive in him the 
image and likeness of God ; but it is a crying shame 
and a burning sin that all should not have the 
same, and be all that their natures would allow 
them to be. It were a sad thing that one man in 
a hundred should be born into the world capable 
of intellectual and aesthetic cultivation, and die out 
of it without a chance to refine his taste, to edu- 
cate his understanding, and improve and ripen his 
whole mind. But what shall we say when such is 
the lot of the great majority of men, — a condi- 
tion so hard that no legislature bewails it, and few 
prayers go up to God that it may be made better ? 



80 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 



Alas ! we must say that the social application of 
religion to life has yet but begun to begin. We 
talk of the rush of time ; it scarcely begins to creep, 
though doubtless it will at last run and be glorified. 
If religion were thus applied to life, we should nip 
crime in the bud. Instead of a jail to punish a 
criminal and make him worse by the vengeance 
society takes on him, we should take him by the 
hand, and while restraining his iniquity, should ex- 
tricate him from those circumstances which would 
have made you or me equal criminals had they 
fallen to our lot. We should open his eyes, and 
appeal to what is left of goodness in him, and then 
try to uplift the fallen man, and never give over 
till the last sand ran out. The schoolmaster and 
moral teacher would take the place of the con- 
stable. How few and simple would our laws be- 
come ! Life would be as fair as it was in Eden. 
Labor would be easy and natural ; one man would 
not be crushed by its fearful excess, nor another 
pampered by indulgence purchased at another's 
toil. Still less would any labor, however hard or 
however revolting, be looked upon as degrading 
or menial or servile. There would no doubt exist 
the eternal distinction of strong and weak, active 
and indolent, rich and poor ; but they would shade 
each into each, like the light of the rainbow, — a 
broad and sevenfold beam of light. 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 81 

Then the grand effort of all would be to promote 
the welfare of each, to render all comfortable. 
This is one object, the earthly end of religion, — to 
make this world a better place, to cast out the 
devils from it, to sweep and garnish this earthly 
house. Yet it is commonly thought religion is 
only for the next life, — that the kingdom of heaven 
must never come on the earth ; and so men do not 
wish to embark in an enterprise where the returns 
are so slow to come, and come only in the next world. 
But it is not so. Religion makes heaven here, for 
there is a mightv meaning in the Saviour's word : 
" Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you." It means keep God's law, and the evils 
of society will vanish ; you shall have all you need 
for the best of purposes. If attempts were made 
to bring this about, what a change would take 
place in social affairs ! Who would accept a 
monopoly, or take a privilege, or do anything to 
the disadvantage of his fellow-man ? 

We see in our day various attempts to apply 
Christianity to life. Temperance societies would 
apply it to diet and drinking; Abolition societies 
to " the patriarchal institution of slavery ; " peace 
and non-resistance societies would apply religion 
to war, to government, and would snap off at once 
whatever interfered with the Christian maxim, 

6 



82 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

u Love one another." These societies are numer- 
ous, and certainly constitute one of the most pleas- 
ing and promising signs of the times. They show 
that religion is coming out of the Church, and gird- 
ing herself for the world of work that lies before 
her. These efforts are good ; they are noble and 
divine. But as yet this action is only superficial 
and partial, and human passions sometimes inter- 
rupt the good work. The reformer leans to one 
side, and will see but a single vice. In a better 
age all of these societies might be blamed, — some- 
times for their extravagance, though oftener for 
their coldness and want of zeal. But now, when 
Christianity nods over her Bible, and sleeps in 
her pew of a Sunday, while she makes slaves or 
keeps them, and strives to render the rich richer 
and the poor poorer all the week, the world 
cannot afford to be nice, and criticise the only 
men that are awake and striving to do the world 
service. 

Once more. The chief, the last application of 
religion to life, must be made individually, each 
man making his own life divine. Is this done, my 
friends ? Is it your meat and drink to make the 
attempt ? Our eyes, so long accustomed to a 
wicked or at least a mean life, often deceive us 
here ; but could we look with Christian eyes, eyes 
purged from their selfish film, we should be a nine 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 83 



days' wonder to ourselves. Let us suppose that 
ten men of superior mental and personal endow- 
ments of nature, and the most perfect culture we 
can conceive of, without much religion, and fifty 
men and women of little capacity and no culti- 
vation, sailing together in a ship, should, by stress 
of weather, be forced upon some uninhabited island 
in the Pacific Ocean. Suppose, further, that pleased 
with its luxuriant soil and pleasant climate, or 
finding no better, they should settle down there 
to live out their life ; and those ten men of shrewd- 
ness and strength should take the fifty who are 
simple and weak, and make them their servants, 
not by force of arms, but by superior adroitness ; 
that these fifty should do the unavoidable drudgery 
of the place, and in return should find a moderate 
subsistence, with scarce any chance for mental 
growth and improvement, while the ten should 
continually improve the mind in all things that do 
become a man. Suppose, further, that as one of 
the ten died, the strongest and shrewdest of the 
fifty should take his place and honors, and all par- 
ties seemed satisfied with the allotment, were about 
as Christian as we are in Xew England, and looked 
upon the state of things as natural and good. If 
we saw it all, what should we say ? Certainly, that 
all was wrong ; it was a good thing that the few 
should be educated, but justice demanded that each 



84 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 



and all should have the best education the whole 
community could give. We should say those men 
who were stronger than the rest are false men, be- 
cause they sought only to benefit themselves, not 
to uplift the others and bless them ; that as the ten 
were shrewd, they should have thoughts for the 
simple ; as they were strong, they should have 
borne the heaviest burdens. This decision would 
be wise and Christian. Then if we came home to 
New England, we should find the story of this fabu- 
lous island was a true tale of society here. The 
strong, the shrewd, the cunning, the educated, seek 
to take care of themselves, and their concern for 
others is only the rare exception to the general 
rule. No doubt it is a man's first duty to take 
care of himself ; but is not care for others likewise 
the legitimate work of those calling themselves 
disciples of Jesus, who sought nothing for himself, 
but gave his life for others ? Yet how stands the 
fact? Take a young man of superior abilities, of 
enviable position, and the best culture which young 
men commonly get, and as he starts in life, what 
is his aim ? Is it not to get the most out of 
society, in the shape of wealth and honors, while 
he does the least for society ? Not that he says 
this to himself in words, but his life reveals what 
lies unconsciously in his heart, at the bottom of 
all. This should be his aim, — to be a man, and 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 



85 



do the greatest for himself, and at the same time 
the most for all others likewise. If this were the 
rule, would you find men asking for privileges, 
struggling for the easiest place and the wealthiest 
honors ? Who is the true soldier, — he who sits in 
the camp and looks on the battle from afar and 
enjoys the spoil, or he who directs the charge, is 
first and foremost when the fight deepens, charging 
in the cannon's mouth ? 

If Christianity were applied in this way to life, 
each man would seek to do most for society, to 
make life comfortable and to be desired. He would 
seek to labor, not to be a drone in the hive, fatten- 
ing on the honey others have toiled to gather in. 
If this application be made by the individual in all 
his acts, the whole work is done. You cannot be 
individually a Christian and socially a heathen and 
politically a savage. The one spirit ruling for the 
individual will run through society and fill the 
nation. Now, men are willing to apply religion 
but little to life, yet because they make religious 
actions the rare and occasional exceptions in their 
lives, fancy they are disciples of Christ and relig- 
ious men. Here and there arises a good man, who 
rejoices in goodness, and seeks occasion to serve 
his fellows in a noiseless way ; but even he makes 
but a partial application of Christianity to his life. 
The dread of innovations, the reverence for the 



86 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

past and present, each excellent in itself, prevents 
the free action of the Divine Spirit. Still more 
does blindness to his actual state lay a flattering 
unction to his soul, and selfishness distract him 
from the noblest aims and truest life. If this is 
the case with the best of men, how is it with those 
less good ? How is it with the worst ? Many men 
are striving to serve God and at the same time 
serve and satisfy their own selfish will, which is at 
enmity with God ; but the two cannot be done, so 
the service of each is imperfect and unsatisfying. 
Religion and selfishness come up before God, as the 
true woman and the false before Solomon to judg- 
ment. As both claimed the living child, while the 
false woman would palm her own dead offspring 
upon the true, so selfishness and religion claim the 
heart of man. But selfishness says to the great 
Judge of all, as that false woman said : " Divide 
the child ; give me half and religion half." But re- 
ligion, like the true mother, says, " Nay, that were 
destruction ; rather give her all for the time, that 
by and by the child may declare for its true 
parent." 

My friends, our only safety for time, our only 
safety for eternity, consists in this individual appli- 
cation of religion to life. Get all else, and what 
are you ? Violating God's law, what are individ- 
uals, what nations ? Ask the history of the world 



APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 87 

and it will tell you. Political action alone is too 
weak, too superficial, to touch the deep causes that 
make a nation. No doubt good rulers can do much 
to aid all that is good, and bad rulers do more to 
destroy what is noble ; but they will but skin and 
film the ulcerous spot, while rank corruption doth 
ruin and canker all within. When the whole land 
is sick with the infirmities and toils and sins of 
thousands of years, and needs some one to hold 
its aching head and prescribe remedies, they will 
give you a sub-treasury or a national bank, — good 
things in their way, no doubt, but how impotent 
to save a State ! Look not for relief from this 
quarter. Trust not to societies to do the work ; 
they can do much, but neither the chief nor the 
better part. It is the individual application of 
Christianity to life — the divine life — which each 
man and woman lives out in the spirit of daily duty, 
it is this alone that can save the man, can save 
society, and save the State. When this is done, — 
when common-sense is applied to religion, and 
Christianity applied to life individually, — social 
and political actions will take care of themselves. 
How little then shall we care about laws and creeds 
and theological distinctions, which make Orthodox 
or Unitarian or Old School or New School ! A 
divine life will be all ; and we shall care as little 
at which church we worship as whether we drink at 



88 APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO LIFE. 

a fountain or a stream. Seeking as of first mo- 
ment the kingdom of God, other things also shall 
be added unto us, — as a sound society, better 
rulers, a happy people, free from poverty, free 
from crime, educated, moral, religious. 



1840. 



vn. 



A SERMON OF MAN. 



So God created man in his own image. In the image of God 



EX are often disposed to take an unfair view 



-LVx of human nature. There is always great 
danger lest the greater part of the race should un- 
dervalue the birthright God has given them. We 
see the wretchedness there is in the world, the sin- 
ner that is inveterate, the sin that has held pos- 
session for many a century. "We see the selfishness 
of strong men, who might lift up and carry forward 
the whole race. We mourn at the servility of weak 
men who encourage the selfishness of the strong. 
We see too the meanness of the honorable of the 
earth, the little wisdom, honesty, and manliness 
needed for success and renown. We look at good 
men ; they are " few and far between," so we say, 
and on their goodness we find spots. Here the 
pious man went astray ; there the saint was over- 
taken and thrown down by sin. So we are ready 
to say, " Man is a low creature ; this mortal life is 



created he him. — Gen. i. 27. 




90 



A SERMON OF MAN 



poor and dirty and short, a very sorry life at the 
best." Tims men say with Solomon, " All is vanity " : 
folly is vain, wisdom vain likewise ; life and death 
both vain ; man is a foolish creature. 

We look around us in life, and see enough of 
folly, sin, and bitter wretchedness. We look behind 
us, and the retrospect is still worse ; for the folly 
of our times is nothing compared with some follies 
that are past and gone, and the wretchedness of 
old times has no parallel at present. We look in 
us, and we find the same thing ; there is sin in our 
bones. We find it difficult to do right ; there are 
temptations to meet. The way of duty seems steep 
and hard to tread ; and the few who step forward in 
front of the age, and labor with great prayers to 
bless poor mortal men, encounter an opposition 
which soon crushes their bodies to the dust. We 
see how the ignorant misunderstand them, the su- 
perstitious curse them, the proud despise, the mean 
hate, and the violent and cunning thwart their 
plans. We see how the world treats its benefactors. 
They oppose the reformer ; they goad him in public 
and sting him in private till they rouse the warlike 
element, and then wonder at the fierce tone with 
which his indignation rolls out, like a flow of mol- 
ten stone from a volcano. We see that John the 
Baptist must leave his head in a charger, and Jesus 
be nailed to the cross, as soon as they attempt to 



A SERMON OF MAN 



91 



make men better ; we see that every path where 
we may tread in safety has been beaten out of the 
hard flint, by the feet of prophets and martyrs, 
who went naked and bleeding, to smooth the way 
for our ungrateful tread. Seeing all this, we con- 
clude that man is a very low animal ; that he never 
can be made much better. So we tell the man of 
burning piety and deep love to God and man, to lay 
aside his dreams, to cease to think of benefiting his 
fellow-men. We tell Paul to keep to the mending of 
tents ; and Simon of Tarsus and Simon of Caper- 
naum, to keep to their fishing and their tanning. 
So we tell the strong sinner to become more sel- 
fish ; that the Christian rule for the strong to help 
the weak is only an Oriental figure of speech, — 
which in plain English means, the strong shall help 
themselves. Thus is wickedness encouraged ; a 
flattering unction is laid to the soul of indolence ; a 
man is told he is good enough if as good as the rest 
of his townsmen ; and humble piety goes to the 
ground ; and Christianity becomes a word for men 
to swear by, and Jesus of Nazareth only a legendary 
name. 

Nothing is more common than this belief in the 
lowness of human nature, in the fact of human 
sin, in the impossibility of directing the ways of 
men and women. They are not angels, we are told 
on all hands ; this earth is not a paradise ; and a 



92 



A SERMON OF MAX. 



wise, pious man, who would make others wise and 
pious, has always been met with the retort, " Why, 
you would make men angels, and earth heaven. 
Then what use of a future state ?" As if earth were 
in danger of being too much like heaven, — or men 
and women likely to be too angelic. Some popular 
forms of religion owe their efficacy — with many 
people — chiefly to the low view they take of man. 
They tell us he is totally lost ; that he is a poor 
grovelling worm, an outcast from God ; that there 
is nothing in him that is noble, that even his best 
work is as filthy rags. The few who speak a word 
in praise of the human soul, who tell us how great 
it is, how capable of unbounded progress ; the few 
who rely on its capabilities and would make all men 
noble and true, — are told they are but dreamers 
of dreams ; they would make man a God, when he 
is but a worm of the dust ; born of a worm, to live 
a worm, to die a worm — and only to become a fly 
in heaven. They are told that their doctrine is too 
high for this world, and too low for the next ; so 
of no use in either, but onlv to be classed with 
dreams whose good thoughts yielded no fruit. Since 
these things are so, it is no wonder that many who 
begin with beating hearts and the loftiest faith in 
man soon conclude they are mistaken, and so fall 
into the common way of thought and speech, and 
rest satisfied with affairs as they are. 



A SERMON OF MAX. 



93 



Now, in the midst of this cry of the lowness of 
human nature, this popular despair of man, it is 
beautiful to look back to those great souls who 
walked with God in the infancy of the world, when 
the stars were fresh and young, and man still un- 
corrupt ; when tyrant custom had not shackled 
him ; before public opinion lay on him heavy and 
fast, and deep almost as life. It is beautiful to turn 
back to the Old Testament and breathe the breath 
of primeval man which still rustles fragrant in its 
leaves ; to catch the spirit of piety and reverence, 
and faith in man, which sweeps on amid the strange 
and uncouth natures of that rude time, or plays 
amid the graceful imagery which Oriental piety has 
set amid its garden of prayer and its temple of 
praise. Here, in the first chapter of the old book, 
we find it written, " God created man in his own 
image." This means, not that God and man have 
the same form, but that there is something divine, 
something godlike in man. 

Xo book takes a nobler view of man's nature 
than the Bible ; it tells us that he is made a little 
lower than the angels. Paul calls us sons of God. 
The Old Testament says we were made for para- 
dise and perfect earthly bliss ; the New Testament, 
that we were made for the kingdom of heaven, for 
perfection, for what is best in our nature. Here 
the wisest, deepest souls of the most pious nation 



94 



A SERMON OF MAX. 



in the Old World attest the dignity of man, and 
they spoke what they felt. There the greatest soul 
that has borne the heavv load of the flesh about him 
attests the same thing, speaking what he knew, 
felt, and lived. Which view shall we take, — the 
opinion of men selfish and unruly, or the high word 
of Moses, of Paul and Jesus, who went down to the 
deeps and up to the heights of man, and told what 
they saw on the mountain of inspiration ? Men be- 
lieve as they live, the low meanly, the true nobly. 

Let us look a little more minutely into these 
matters, and glance somewhat in detail, though 
briefly, at the nobleness of man's nature and his 
large capacities. For this purpose we may make a 
division of human nature into the understanding, the 
affections, and the moral and religious sentiments. 

First, the understanding. Its greatness may be 
inferred from its works. Let us suppose we were 
to examine a little berry from a bush with a 
microscope of magnifying power sufficiently great 
to show that its surface was diversified with plains 
and mountains, land and sea, and the land inhabited 
by a race of creatures proportionate in size to the 
puny littleness of this planet, so that their size bore 
the same proportion to the berry, which was one 
eighth of an inch in diameter, that our size bears 
to the earth, which is eight thousand miles in diam- 
eter ; that the minute dust on the berry's surface 



A SER210N OF MAN. 



95 



formed vast mountains to these inconceivably small 
creatures. Let us suppose we should discover that 
these little creatures had tilled the surface of this 
sphere, built villages and towns, had ships and 
factories, steamboats and railroads ; still further 
that they pursued science, and had calculated the 
distance between their own sphere and others, even 
to the distance of many rods ; that they had esti- 
mated its weight, determined its size, its shape, and 
knew how much it differed from a perfect globe ; 
that they had penetrated its interior and found out 
how it grew, how long it had been in its present 
shape, and how rapidly it was dying, — should we not 
say these little creatures were the most surprising 
beings ; that they had a nature as vast as their 
world was little, an understanding before which 
angels might bow down ? Yet what these fabulous 
creatures have done on this berry one eighth of an 
inch in diameter, men have done on this world eight 
thousand miles in diameter. The understanding 
of man has measured the earth and weighed it. He 
can tell the distance to the sun, and the farthest 
planet ; he has learned the laws by which they 
move ; can tell you where they were four thousand 
years ago, or will be four thousand years hence. He 
knows their weight, how they attract each other. 
He measures the celestial spaces, is familiar with 
Arcturus and Orion, and knows at what hour of the 



96 



A SERMON OF MAN. 



day Sirius set or rose in the year the Pyramid was 
finished. This knowledge is so common that we 
almost cease to wonder at it, not reflecting what 
mysterious force it implies in little creatures scarce 
six feet high to measure spaces thousands and 
thousands of miles wide, without changing their 
positions. Man makes the stars to keep time for 
him; by the force of his understanding, he can bind 
the strong sea, and seize on the rough elements 
that slumber in the mountains and caverns of the 
earth and make them his servants, to run his 
errands up and down the earth. 

But the greatness of man's understanding is 
only more obvious in science, it is not greater. 
The wise saying of Moses, or Socrates, which has 
ploughed through the ages and come down to us, is 
no less a proof of the wondrous power of the mind 
of man, — no less a sign of the image of God. 
The form which some artist carves out of the rock 
of humanity, and hands down to us through years 
of waiting, proves the same greatness of thought 
which sails the celestial spaces and tells us where 
the comet hides. Perhaps nothing shows more 
obviously to all men the mightiness of the under- 
standing of man than the well-known fact that we 
are able to tell the ages of continents and islands, 
when they assumed their present form, what races 
of animals peopled them, what plants grew thereon, 



A SERMON OF MAX, 



97 



what fish sailed their seas, what birds soared in 
the sky thousands of years before there was a man 
on the face of the earth. The hieroglyphics of 
God lie writ on the stone ; and human science reads 
the wondrous scroll. 

Second, the affections, which are greater than 
the understanding, more divine in their action. It 
is nobler to love your brother than to think the 
thoughts of Moses or Leibnitz. It is a great thing, 
no doubt, to be master of science, and hold in your 
hand the key to Xature's wide domain ; but it is little 
compared to that soft affection which seeks to bless 
objects dear to itself. The affection, pure and dis- 
interested, which one man sometimes bears another, 
shows a soul deeper and truer than the proudest 
science ever reveals. The love which a mother 
bears for her child, which broods over it with un- 
ceasing care, enduring days of privation and nights 
of watching for its sake, not counting this a sacri- 
fice, but a pleasure, — this affection tells of deeper 
depth and loftier heights than the philosopher finds 
in the heavens above him. That power of love which 
serves to bring the whole being of a mother into 
this one sentiment, so that her thoughts, cares, 
wishes, supplications, all have this one end and 
aim for the time ; so that self is forgot ; so that 
common bodily wants cease to be felt, and the frail 
woman's body is strong to do and suffer through 



98 



A SERMON OF MAX. 



force of this feeling, — this shows a dignity and di- 
vinity of soul far beyond what science requires. The 
astronomer may carry a selfish spirit into his lofty 
thoughts ; ambition, love of renown, may inspire 
him to outwatch the stars ; but the affection which 
abandons itself for the welfare of one dearer than 
self, the love which counts as nothing the service 
it renders, repines not while it suffers, and so is 
warmed by the smoke of its own incense, — this is 
deeper and diviner than any power of thought, 
though it may measure the sky and create poems 
and philosophies, the admiration of the wise and 
the despair of the ambitious. To show the great- 
ness of human nature, you shall not bring up 
Solomon with his wisdom, nor holy Esaias with his 
lips of fire ; you shall not tell me of Bacon and 
Newton, who inverted all the thoughts of their 
predecessors, and bent their eagle gaze far on into 
time, thinking for ages not yet come ; but you shall 
go to a humble cottage and show me some mother 
dividing with her child the scanty pittance her toil 
has earned, and taking but a crumb for herself. 
You shall see the patience with which she watches 
over a sickly child, and still bears up when the 
body craves food and rest, and she is sick at heart. 
The courage that wades to its neck in blood is 
cowardice to this heroism of affection ; the sage's 
thought, the artist's fancy, the orator's liquid 



A SERMON OF MAN 



99 



speech, are poor and petty compared to this. It 
transmutes the lowliest cabin in Ireland into a spot 
holy as the spot the sacred tread. To find this 
depth of soul, it is not a council of kings we are to 
look at, nor an assembly of sages, where genius and 
wisdom empurple the air with their light : we are to 
go to that poor widow who dropped into the temple 
chest her two mites, which made, both of them, but 
the quarter of a penny. It is here we are to look. 
It is this affection which finds out God, when the 
world in its wisdom knows him not ; prophets and 
Saviours find repose on the bosom of love, while 
the wise would scourge them and nail them to the 
cross. It is this which welcomes goodness, and 
watches when it dies, and comes early to its 
tomb; while greatness sits in its place, and can- 
ning puts a watch over the poor, and wise men 
invent a lie to deceive the people. 

Third, a proof equally strong may be seen in 
the moral state of man. To adhere to a great prin- 
ciple of right in the midst of trouble and persecu- 
tion and distress, because it is right, shows equally 
the greatness of man. Here he asks no reward, he 
quails at no dangers, but does what he knows is 
right and true, though he knows they for whom it 
is done mock at and oppress him. This implies a 
stern greatness of soul which may not seem so 

beautiful as the affections, but betravs the secret 
l.ofC. 



100 



A SERMON OF MAX. 



strength that lies in man's soul. The Christian 
apostles, the martyrs of every religion that ever 
has been, who have sealed with their blood the 
faith they lived out, — they are examples of this 
kind of greatness. These are the men who took 
up truth when she had fallen by the wayside, and 
bore her through the conflict of life, through fiery 
assaults and persecution unto death. They bore 
the burdens of the world ; thev stood in the fore- 
front of the battle, to do and to dare for principle 
and truth. Set truth, with death, in one scale, and 
falsehood, with life and ease, in the other, they will 
not waver. Over them steel loses its power, and 
public opprobrium its shame. 

Fourth, the religious element in man is most 
of all divine. This faith, this perfect reliance on 
the great soul of all tilings, which made you and 
the stars over your head, — a reliance so deep and 
perfect that there is no doubt of his goodness, his 
presence in trouble, his triumph in death, his in- 
finite love, to watch over and bless in all ages not 
vet seen by the soul, — this faith reveals still more 
closely the likeness of God in which we are made. 
It can rejoice in its troubles ; it finds a pillow in 
the wildest storms ; does not despair when the ob- 
jects of affection are wrung from its grasp ; does 
not sink when Xature weeps bloody tears ; impre- 
cates no evil on its foes though the breath expire 



A SERMON OF MAN. 



101 



in their hands, but asks pardon for their igno- 
rance ; in view of its own distress, asks only that 
God's will be done. This faith, that sees through 
trouble, bears crosses with no murmurs, survives 
the loss of all the mortal heart holds dearest, and 
asks for nothing but freedom from its fears and 
submission for itself, — how vast a thing it is ! It 
lifts us above the wonders of science, which has its 
bounds, carries us beyond the human affections, is 
more blessed than moral principle, and gives to 
each heart an element of heaven itself, Man may 
stand for a time on moral principle alone, but it 
is narrow as it is high. No doubt it is noble in 
man to achieve the wonders of science and all the 
miracles of thought ; to possess a principle which 
can sustain him in the most terrible of trials, and 
never shrink in depths of affliction ; that is content 
to spend and be spent ; and when all of them are 
united in one man, well is he called the image of 
God, a little lower than the angels. 

But the religious element is more than all these. 
It seems to raise him to the skies, to give him 
readiest access to the mind of God ; to reveal his 
majestic presence in each atom of space, in each 
moment of time, when the heart swells high with 
hope, or faints and is feeble with grief. In this, 
the loftiness and dignity of man are more than 
ever apparent. To the best spirit there comes a 



102 



A SERMON OF MAX 



time when knowledge cannot sustain, when the 
mind totters and knows not which wav to turn, but 
feels it must fall and perhaps perish, — times when 
we look round for help, and there is none on the 
earth. Our truest assistants have fled, and are but 
a cloud of dust far off where the sky comes down 
to the land. There is a time when friends forsake, 
when there is no hope, the world has no sympathy ; 
when life seems a weary and heavy burden, and 
death the onlv relief, — and that too intolerable. 
Then the soul of faith comes into the man. He 
knows that he is sure by the perfect witness of 
God. He feels the sympathy of that great Soul of 
all, and says with modest triumph, 44 I am not 
alone. Xo, God is with me." Light seems to ex- 
pire, mortal affections cease their melody ; but the 
Infinite speaks to his soul comfort too deep and too 
divine for words. What if he has not the sun of 
human affections to cheer him I The faces of the 
stars look from the serene depths of divine love, 
and sav, 44 Well done ! " What if the sweet music 
of human approbation is hushed to his ear, the 
melody of the spheres rolls in upon his soul its 
tranquil tide, and that same voice that was in the 
beginning says, 44 Thou art my beloved Son." Earth 
is overcome ; heaven is gained. 

It is well that we are sometimes tried with such 
fiery trials, that we may know how strong we are, 



A SERMON OF MAX, 



103 



and how near is God. It is well that God now 
and then in this world raises us up a hero of the 
spirit, — a Moses, a Paul, a Jesus, — to show us the 
measure of a man, and how much in us is divine, else 
we should form low views of our heart and life. 

Now, all of these things are but human ; the ele- 
ments of them all lie in each man that is born of 
woman. "We have all felt these same sentiments 
in a degree. Yes, the poorest of us all has in him 
the embryo of Moses and of Jesus. Yes, of much 
more, for even Jesus has not exhausted the capac- 
ity of man ; what is not unfolded now may be 
hereafter. No one will say the entireness of man's 
power has been lived out. 

In view of this common image in which we are 
created, how poor are the distinctions the world 
has made ! In view of this image of God in which 
we are created, how poor are the attainments of 
you and me, — yes, of the best of us ! My friends, 
you all know it is possible to live in this divine 
nature, and so approach continually to the likeness 
of God, or it is possible to live the other way, till 
you say it is all a dream, this talk of human great- 
ness, — a shallow dream, and nothing but a dream. 

" Lives of great men all remind us 
AVe can make our lives sublime." 

Moses and Christ, and all the great souls that have 
ever lived, tell us what is in man ; they bring life to 



104 



A SERMON OF MAN. 



us ; they make wisdom wiser, love deeper, life more 
holy and more high. But they do it only for those 
who, like them, love what is good and fair and holy. 
It is of no use to you that Moses made laws and 
lived divinely, and Christ rests from his labors and 
has gone into the sky, unless you also will do the 
same. You may have all their divine capacities, and 
yet never use them ; may know of all the examples of 
wisdom, love, virtue, religion, that exalt our idea of 
man, and may believe there is somewhat divine in 
you likewise, and yet make your life little and weak 
and low. You may see the kingdom of heaven 
right at hand, and yet suffer a mere passion to bar 
its glittering gate. You may be told on a Sunday 
of the excellency of a glorious life, and yet never 
care to make it your own during the week. My 
friends, does it not become men of this capacity to 
ask sometimes where they are, and whither they 
go ; whether each day brings them forward or 
casts them back ? To perfect in you the image of 
God is the work of a life, — the great work. It can 
be accomplished only by a life. Not by a few brief 
resolutions in your better moments, though they 
have their use, but by the plain path of daily duty 
is this Avon ; by faithful work and just thought, 
pure and holy love, the heart of goodness and the 
soul of faith. 



1841. 



VIII. 



THE PACT OF LIFE AND THE IDEA 
OF LIFE. 

The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not; 
that I do. — Rom. vii. 19. 

IN this verse the apostle speaks of two things 
and implies a third thing ; he speaks of the 
desire of a good life and the living of one not good, 
and implies that there is thus a sad contradiction 
between the two. Let us follow out the apostle's 
fertile hint. Your attention is asked therefore to a 
sermon on the idea of life, the fact of life, and the 
reconciliation we are to make between the idea and 
the fact. 

1. The Idea of Life. — All men have some idea 
of what they ought to be and how they ought to 
live. There is no man who does not know there 
is a wrong way which he ought to shun, and a right 
way he ought to follow. No doubt in many this 
idea is very confused ; it is rarely made a subject 
of careful and serious meditation. It is true that 
some go through the world and perhaps never 
spend so much thought on the plan of a good life 



106 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



as they spend on the purchase of a horse. This is 
a hard thing to say, but many there are who rarely 
dwell upon this subject ; who do not accustom 
themselves to think of principles, but only of 
actions, and judge them, not by an ideal standard 
of right, but by a practical one of interest ; and if 
the action is successful, and money comes of it, all 
is well. Still, even those men have an idea which 
is above their actual character. No one would say 
he was so good as he should be, — so self-denying ; 
so ready to forgive an injury ; so eager to do all 
possible good to him who needs it. The idea may 
be rarely dwelt on, but it is there. It may be voice- 
less, and for all present purposes useless, but there 
it is. The drunkard, the miser, the knave, the 
churl, the sharper, and the shrew, all know better 
than they do. 

We get at this idea of what we should be, just 
as the spiritual faculties in us expand. As we see 
good and evil in life, as we feel the various emo- 
tions in ourselves, we get a knowledge of what is 
distinctly and purely good. We see a good man, 
but he is not so good as our idea of goodness ; for 
that rises above all the limitations which diminish 
and hinder the goodness of this man and that. So 
by means of this idea of goodness, we are able to 
criticise the character of men who pass for good, and 
blame Paul for his passion, Peter for his weakness 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 107 



and falsehood, and Barnabas and Mark for their 
disagreement. When a man comes completely up 
to our idea of goodness, we pronounce him a per- 
fect man, or, in the language of the Pagans and 
of some Christian scholars, a God-man. 

Now, this idea of goodness, moral and soul per- 
fection, is as native to our constitution as seeing 
is native to the eye, and hearing to the ear. The 
idea does not come from without, but from within. 
To use the language of the present theology, it is 
a revelation ; outward things help us to do it. We 
are all of us in this way indebted to the influence 
of our parents, who have helped or hindered our 
growth ; to our friends, whose good or bad charac- 
ter had an influence subtle and unseen, it may be, 
but real and deep ; to the books we read ; to the 
services in the church we frequent ; to the past 
and present ; above all these external helps, to 
Jesus of Nazareth, who gave us the idea in his 
words, and showed it bright and beaming and 
beautiful in his life. 

But we do not come all at once to a perfect per- 
ception of this idea ; it is of gradual growth and 
development in most men. An idea lies in twi- 
light before it comes to day. We do not come all 
at once to the full stature of spirit we are made to 
reach. The idea of what we should be comes with 
our growth. Each new virtue we see, each holy 



108 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



emotion we feel, each good action we do, helps to 
elevate our standard of what we should be and 
feel and do. Thus the idea of the boy is little and 
low compared with that of the true man, though it 
sometimes happens that shades of darkness close 
upon the heaven that hung about us in infancy, 
and the man's dreams of perfection are poor and 
dim when measured by the boy's idea. In such a 
case life is a retreat, not a progress. But if the 
man lives true and nobly, in youth he passes by 
the spot which his boyish fancy fixed on as the 
summit of things, and sees untrod mountains still 
above him, where a purer sunlight and a more 
transparent atmosphere invite him upward and on. 
In manhood he leaves behind him the prayers of 
his youth, and soars and sings at a loftier height ; 
and when old age confirms the possession of what 
the boy promised, what the youth prayed for, and 
what manhood won, the idea goes farther up, and 
weaves a halo of glory about the silver hairs of 
age ; and in the transparent quietness of that period, 
his eye purged of the film of passion, he sees what 
never cheered his thought before. So it was witli 
Socrates ; so with Paul ; so with many a blessed 
man ; with all who live fair and true. 

Now, this idea involves several things relative 
to man's moral and religious character. We may 
consider them alone. 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE, 109 



What is our conception of a perfect and com- 
plete man ? He is gifted with each intellectual 
accomplishment and every manly grace ; but we 
feel that the absence of them does not mar the 
moral perfection of man, and know that perhaps 
no one has been created in the full stature of human 
possibility, being in one person all that human 
nature will allow or is capable of being in many 
persons. To be the saint, the sage, poet and artist, 
musician, statesman, mechanic, all in one, and per- 
fect in each, — this is a privilege God grants to none 
of his children. For human nature is never ex- 
hausted in one man, — 

" One science only will one genius fit." 

But we pronounce a man perfect, and as he should 
be, when even without these intellectual and other 
graces, his moral and religious nature is as it 
should be. No one objects to Paul that he was 
not a sculptor, nor to Jesus that he sung no 
psalms like the sweet singer of Israel. Laying 
aside that which is accidental, the idea involves 
this : a character conformable to the eternal rule 
of right ; a man that does right, thinks right, 
feels right; and that not only now and then, 
and here and there, but everywhere and always ; 
a man who is thoroughly true to himself and what 
God gives him, whose thought is divine, and his 



110 THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE, 



life as his thought. Every man who thinks seri- 
ously will confess that such an idea is the true one 
to be copied and made real in action. This idea 
is reasonable, natural, and Christian. It stands 
when tried by whatever tests. Present this idea 
to a serious man, he feels that it ought to fit him 
and become his life. 

2. The Fact of Life. — Each man of us all has 
a certain character of his own peculiar to himself, 
and so different from that of any other man. 
This character — and by this is meant not his 
reputation, not the opinion others have about him, 
but the thing he is himself — is the result of two 
forces. First, that spiritual power which is the 
man himself, stripped of all accidental additions, 
and secondly, the circumstances of his bodily or- 
ganization, and the other external matters which 
make up his outward condition. So then we say, 
all in a word, his character is the result of the 
man's soul and of his circumstances. Some say a 
man's soul makes his circumstances ; others that 
the circumstances make the soul. The truth 
seems to be that they act and react upon one an- 
other, and generate the character of the man in 
general, and give it the special emphasis which 
belongs to the man ; and the character is spiritual 
just so far as it rests on eternal principles of im- 
mutable morality and so is above circumstances; 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. Ill 

and unspiritual just so far as it is dependent upon 
circumstances and subject to them, — just so far 
as it does not rest on immutable principles of 
morality. 

Now, what, let us ask, is the fact of life in gen- 
eral ? It does not answer to the idea. The char- 
acter and the action of most men seem accidental, 
dependent on circumstances, not essential and rest- 
ing on principle. It is not with them an habitual 
principle to do always their best. You know that 
the granite will be as stable to-morrow as it was 
last night; you do not know that Alexander and 
Peter, your neighbors, will be honest out of sight. 
They follow good if it comes in their way. They 
are kind-hearted when their interest demands it; 
virtuous, in a land of sober habits ; religious, so 
far as it is popular so to be ; Christian, because it 
falls in with the current of the times ; they are 
self-denying when nothing is to be given or done ; 
tolerant when all agree with them ; tranquil when 
nothing disturbs ; and forgiving when nobody offends 
them. But let the circumstances of the case vary 
and be just the opposite; then the man is hard- 
hearted through interest, goes to the wildest excess 
when out of sight of the land of sober habits ; he 
is religious when religion is popular, and destitute 
of Christianity among the heathen. His self-denial 
is gone when it is called to the work ; his tolerance 



112 THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



vanishes the moment you disagree with him ; a 
small temptation overcomes his tranquillity ; and 
his forgiving love is clean gone forever, the mo- 
ment a neighbor offends him by word or act. Of 
course this must take place when the character 
rests on circumstances ; the cause changes, and of 
course the effect also changes. He has virtually 
said to principle as Jacob said to Jehovah, " If thou 
wilt keep me out of all manner of trouble, then 
thou shalt be my God ; if not, not." 

Now, compare this idea, absolute and perfect, the 
idea of divine life, with the fact of life as it is, 
and there is a gloomy contradiction between them. 
Everybody that thinks, sees it ; whosoever feels, 
mourns over it. Alas for us ! — " beinp darklv wise 
and rudely great," we may well say with Paul, " We 
do not the good we know ; who shall deliver us 
from the body of this death ? " I will not attempt 
to point out for others the great gulf between the 
idea and the fact of life, — what a man knows he 
should be, and what he feels he is, — but I will ask 
you each to do it for himself ; to do it coolly, seri- 
ously, with thoroughness. 

3. When the idea and the fact do not correspond, 
and a serious man sees and feels the gulf between 
them, there comes difficulty and trouble. The idea 
and the fact contend in the man, — the one for its 
rights, the other for the possession of what it has 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 113 

got. This is the great battle of the soul and the 
senses ; no wonder at the strong language in which 
men paint it. It is Satan and the archangel con- 
tending for the life of the man. Bunyan says of 
it, " the Devil fought with me weeks long." In this 
collision, to settle the question really and finally, 
one of two things must be done : either the idea 
must be brought down, or the fact must be brought 
up. There is no peace for a serious man till this 
question is disposed of. In the heart of a man 
serious and desirous of serving God, but who has 
been led into evil ways, it is a plain matter. He 
elevates the fact of his life, becomes his idea ; peni- 
tent, he passes over the great gulf, and is received 
into Abraham's bosom. But with a selfish man, 
of no great regard for principles, a man conformed 
to this world and loving conformity therewith, the 
matter takes a different shape. He puts off the 
question, trusts as before to accident, is outwardly 
good to-day, and to-morrow outwardly bad, but 
inwardly deficient in one case as much as the 
other. He would love God, and yet keep in with 
mammon; he seeks the kingdom of heaven, yet 
makes to himself a friend of the mammon of un- 
righteousness ; is neither hot nor cold ; is perhaps 
the more devout of a Sunday because he left off 
sin the night before, and hopes to resume it the 

next morning. He is half ashamed of the fact of 

8 



114 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



his life, but afraid of the idea of life ; for he sees 
where it would carry him, and being frightened 
now and then, he dreams, as it were, and talks in 
his sleep, swears a prayer or two, puts up a vow to 
live, as he feels he should, a life lived on principle 
and purpose, — a life true to the idea. But soon he 
sleeps again. This course may be pursued years 
long. I need not tell the falseness of such a 
course, nor its sadness ; they know who try it. 
But the balance will not always swing over, shake 
it often as you will, when one scale is charged with 
life and the other with death. By and by the 
beam turns. The idea is dim, and the fact is 
dark. Slowly the light of God wanes and grows 
pale in the soul, as the dreams of the boy, the 
heaven that lay about us in our infancy, fades out 
of the man; as the senses grow over the spirit, 
and the man abandons principle altogether, becomes 
what in sin some men are. Few things are so 
melancholy. Let us turn away our eyes from be- 
holding a scene so sad. 

There are two false ways whereby men seek 
to quiet the strife between the pure idea and the 
troubled fact. One is that of the mystic, the other 
that of the sensualist. Both feel the discord ; both 
seek to end it by destroying or winking out of sight 
one of the parties to this discord, or concealing one 
of the factors of this product. The mystic refuses 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE, 



115 



to look at the fact, the sensualist at the idea ; so 
the mystic lives only in the idea, but does not seek 
to make it his life. His idea is beautiful and di- 
vine, the idea of an angel life, — calm as the stars, 
so serene and high ; but he leaves the fact to the 
care of itself. Morality, goodness, love, faith, are 
everything in thought, nothing in life. His idea sits 
like a vestal virgin, — free from all contact with 
the world, queenly and majestic, but useless, and 
without fruit. The sensualist — by whom I do not 
mean a man who wallows in sin of the senses — 
puts out the idea. He will not look at the principle. 
He is always afraid lest his standard be too high, lest 
he aim to be " righteous over- much." Justice, 
goodness, truth, love, are nothing to him, worth 
only what they will bring. He feels that he must 
do one of two things, — give up his idea, or his fact 
of life. He lets the idea go. It once happened 
that a woman given to the vanities of the world 
heard for some months a Christian preacher — now 
of great fame — whose doctrine was angel music 
played on a mortal string ; and feeling, as she con- 
fessed, that she must change her life if she contin- 
ued to hear such words, she left the church and 
sought elsewhere what could easily be found, — 
words of more earthly note. She abandoned the 
idea which she knew to be right for the sake of the 
fact, poor, wretched, and unsatisfying. Such things 



116 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



are not so rare as we fancy ; it is the tale of many 
a man. As he sets out in life, his idea is high, 
his dream beautiful. He means to live it out ; but 
by and by he concludes that the world never can be 
much mended, that little is to be got out of life. 
So he sits down contented. Few things are more 
mournful than this, — to see how soon the sensu- 
ality and sin which are in the world rob youth of 
its dreams, and man of his hope ; take the prayer 
out of the soul, the fire out of the heart, the idea 
out of the man, and leave him poor and pitiful, with 
no hope in the future, no satisfaction in the past, 
no love for the present. How blessed it is to see one 
pass through the gayety and grief of life, its cares, 
troubles, perils, who has the garlands and shining 
robes of his ideal still about him ; whom defeat dis- 
mays not, nor the sight of sin causes to despair, nor 
toil and grief afflict with heaviness of heart. Such 
a man bids us take courage, — to make the fact 
like the idea, and that still higher yet. 

But both of the others, the mvstic and the sen- 
sualist, if they succeed in their end, are farther 
from this purpose than before ; they purchase 
peace by abandoning that which was worth con- 
tending about or living for. The old Romans, says 
truth-telling Tacitus, devastated a province, killing 
men, women, and children, and then proclaimed 
peace when they had left only a solitude. 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE, 117 

4. The Reconciliation of the Idea and the 
Fact. — This is a matter simple and plain. Make 
your idea your life, in little things, great things, 
all things. 

When a man attempts really to reconcile his fact 
with his idea of life, the first result is peace. He is 
at one with himself, at one with God. The clouds 
of evening have no angry look, for he is pure as 
morning's dawn. He is not torn with that con- 
flict which goes on in some men incessantly, when 
they cannot make up their minds to be good all 
over and all through, but wish to steer a halfway 
course, have a chapel for God, and offer the Devil 
some small sacrifice in a by-place. All this is at 
an end. The angel of peace dwells in his heart ; 
there is none to molest nor drive him away. He 
goes on a pilgrimage toward his native land, — 
the realm of angels, — each night pitching his tent 
a day's march nearer home. 

The next result is growth. His idea rises higher 
and higher yet. What was before dark, or light 
only in parts, becomes all one light ; as before 
morning dawns, the stars keep their high watch in 
the heavens, and seem too beautiful to be used, but 
bright enough to keep us from stumbling ; but by 
and by the dayspring begins, the stars grow pale, as 
the gray and early light comes over the sky ; one 
after another, the stars burn dim and expire. It is 



118 



THE FACT AND IDEA OF LIFE. 



neither day nor night, but a negative of darkness, an 
elimination of light. Soon the rosy dawn comes up ; 
the crimson light kisses the hill-tops and the trees, 
the full sun comes in strength, burning and beau- 
teous. So in this state of reconciliation with the idea 
and the fact of life, the idea grows sublime and more 
glorious, and carries the life up with it. Then 
how fair it is to live ! Man, not sensual but divine ; 
pure, true, and religious. Such is the life of the 
sons of God. Look on the idea of Christ given for 
the world ! Look on the fact of the world's life, — 
its life as it is. Nay, turn to what concerns us 
more nearly ; look at the fact of your own life. 
What a great gulf between that and the idea ! Yet 
each may bridge over that gulf, may live as high 
as he thinks and feels. 



1842. 



IX. 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



There they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right 
hand, and the other on the left. — Luke xxiii. 33. 



HEN a man dies, we all take an interest in 



* * him, if never before. You see the lifeless 
body of some poor outcast who has died under a 
wall with none to close his eyes and minister to 
the last bitter wants of nature. You feel a respect 
for the poor remains that once held a soul, which 
is now gone back to its God, and perhaps shines 
brighter than that of many a saint. You think of 
the friends that will ask for him and repeat his 
name again and again, and dream and start in their 
sleep for joy that he has come, and wake to find it 
was a dream ; you think of the mother that bore 
him, and such as called him child, brother, friend. 
The difference betwixt you and him is lost for the 
moment, and you feel a veneration for the clod that 
was but now informed by a soul. When some crim- 
inal is put to death by the laws he has long violated, 
there is a reaction in his favor ; when it is said he 




120 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



who had long done wickedness has now paid the 
penalty set upon crime, we say, " Well, perhaps 
there were some mitigating circumstances which 
we do not know, — he had stronger passions than 
we, his companions were dissolute, his father set 
him no good example, there was not a kind mother 
to train him up to goodness and to God, and lead 
him to heaven through pleasant paths." Death, 
the great leveller, has cancelled the bond we had 
against him ; and the humanity that never dies, but 
often sleeps in us, comes up, and we feel an interest 
in the man, culprit though he be. When a man 
dies, leaving his work unfinished, his blossom in 
the bud ; when a man wears himself out in a great 
work, or falls a martyr to his zeal, his patriotism, 
his religion, we feel for him not as for common 
men. We build an altar for him in our hearts and 
enshrine there his memory. 

How do men cherish the names of such as have 
been faithful unto death in the cause thev under- 
took ! What charms has poetry woven about the 
fiery death of the soldier ! To many it seems at- 
tractive and full of glory. How do we honor that 
long line of martyrs from the beginning and reach- 
ing on in shadowy and wide ranks through all the 
ages of Christian story, — the men who took their 
lives in their hands, and dared be free; the men 
who opposed the darkness, the error, the fury, the 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



121 



sin of their time, and met a prophet's reward ; 
shame and death, ah ! there is a shrine for such 
men in all hearts that are true. You may perse- 
cute men, but out of the very persecution their guar- 
dian and deliverer rises : put them to death, and out 
of their ashes there spring up nevr men and greater. 
It was the custom of an ancient State, when a 
war was ended, to bring home the bones of their 
slain children with solemn pomp to the mother 
city. Then were formal and costly honors paid to 
them, while all the public followed in the train of 
mourners for the martyrs of patriotism. Then 
some man of dignified character whose reputation 
gave weight to his words, some man of persuasive 
and eloquent speech, some Pericles or Demos- 
thenes at the public council, stood up and celebrated 
the courage of those who nobly dared to die. The 
lesson sank into the people's mind. The self-denial 
of the sire was wrought into the spirit of the son. 
The same principle acts in the Church. Its confes- 
sors, its martyrs, — they are brightest among its 
saints, honored in holy hearts. Xow such martyrs 
are not rare. The age for them has passed away ; 
but could it return, there would be enough of us, 
cold and practical as we seem, to lay down our life 
on the headstone block or breathe it away in the 
hiss of blazing fagots. It is but a cheap courage, 
after all, that is required for that. 



122 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



Now, here in the case of Jesus we have a young 
man but little more than thirty years old, just be- 
ginning his greatest work, dying a martyr to his 
faith ; slain by the men he sought to bless ; a mar- 
tyr to religion, dying the most ignominious of 
deaths, with a criminal on each hand, to add injury 
to the inglorious cross. Yet we see from the spot, 
from the gallows on which he suffered, from the 
hour when he bowed his head and said, u It is fin- 
ished," that a light has gone out to the ends of the 
earth, — a light which never will set. We see that 
very cross to which he was nailed invested with a 
glory far greater than a monarch's crown. Men 
bear it on their banners, place it in their churches ; 
it is to them the symbol of self-denial and uncon- 
querable might. Women wear it on their bosom, 
a silent but precious symbol of the uncertainties of 
life, of the strength that overcomes them. From 
the hour when that young man of Galilee said, 
" Father, forgive them," with what a new glory has 
the Son of man been invested ! 

What is it that makes the magic of this death, 
and fixes all eyes on that scene of his life ? It is 
common to die for one's faith, — above all, to die for 
one's religious faith. Each nation can furnish ex- 
amples of that. Huss and Jerome of Prague, and 
John Rogers and Cranmer, have lived nearer our 
time, each laying down his life for his faith ; but we 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



123 



never think of them in connection with our faith. 
Why is it that the crucifixion of Christ is the great 
event in his life to so many men, the great event in 
the world's life ? I think it must be sought in the 
character of the man, the circumstances of the case, 
and the consequences of the event. 

First, here is the noblest of the sons of men, so 
pure that his accuser and judge said, " I find no 
fault in the man ; " so religious and moral that to 
all of us, eighteen centuries after his death, he 
stands as the ideal and archetype of religion, a 
complete man of faith and works, cut off by the 
very men he sought to save, cut off for his excel- 
lence, not for his want of it. He who had gone 
about doing good, a young man, whom fear could 
not dismay, nor wealth bribe, nor the devout re- 
spect felt for Moses and Elias turn from the path 
of duty, — this man, the bud and orient blossom of 
humanity, to be thus cut down ! Here was purity 
so great that the next age worshipped him ; spirit- 
ual power so vast and with so deep insight, a 
heart so loving, a life so fair, that the best portion 
of the race of men for sixteen centuries have 
counted him a god, yes, the very God ; and it all 
falls at the hands of its foes. To step aside from 
the opinions so often formed of Jesus, and opinions 
for which the world has fought bitter wars, let us 
contemplate him freely as a man, tempted in all 



124 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



things like as we are, yet without sin, as the evan- 
gelists and apostles contemplated him. Look at 
the work he had undertaken, to bring about the 
kingdom of God on earth, — that is, to break every 
yoke of superstition, folly, sin ; to establish the 
reign of peace, brotherhood, love ; to make religion 
not a thing of temples and forms and ritual ob- 
servance, but a thing of daily life ; to restore to 
man his rights and bring him to his true estate. 
Compare this to any reform of past time, and what 
a work was here, — a work with no bounds ; a work 
undertaken by a Jewish carpenter, who began when 
about thirty years old. Let us look a moment at 
the other great reforms of the world ; the main 
attempts, I mean, to promote man's growth in man- 
liness, in wisdom and religion. There are three 
such, most distinctly marked. 

The reform by Luther was one ; but here the 
aim was partial ; to set men free from the supersti- 
tion of the Church. Its great leaders did not see 
other yokes of bondage with which men's necks 
were oppressed. A great soul was there, and 
greatly striving, but its aim, though high, was not 
the highest ; its method, though fair, was not the 
fairest. The next great reform, to go backward 
in the scroll of time, was the attempt of Socrates 
to restore the Athenian youth to goodness and 
religion. It is one of the noblest pages of the 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



125 



world that records the story of that great and good 
man; you and I are his debtors. His aim too was 
noble, but it was partial. He aimed only to re- 
store the old religion, not to lead men to absolute 
religion ; to establish such morality as was worth 
while in an Athenian youth, not absolute morality. 
I know his aim, though partial, was nobler by far 
than some Christians make the aim of Christ to 
have been, but they are Christians that know not 
what they do. Socrates too died as a martyr to 
his work, but how different the work ! Go back 
still farther to another great reform, that of Moses. 
Here too was one of the greatest men of the an- 
cient world. To forsake the worship of many 
gods, the dreadful and licentious rites of Egypt 
or Chaldea, and take to the worship of one God, — 
how beautiful the thought, how vast the stride 
humanity would make ! But here too there were 
limitations. The end of Moses was not to make 
a man religious and moral at all times and all 
places, but in the temple, on great occasions. Then 
too there were defects in the aim he set before 
men. The whole had an outside character. 

Compare the work of Jesus, then, with any one 
of the three mighty reforms, that of Moses ; of 
Socrates, of Luther, — though the last was the work 
of many minds and was only an attempt to apply 
anew the words of Jesus himself, — and what a 



126 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



difference between them ! How does the aim of 
Jesus stand conspicuous over all the rest ! It was 
this work of reconciling man with man ; of making 
the strong willing to bear the strong man's burden 
and to help the weak ; the work of teaching men 
that they had a Father, in whose presence it was 
beautiful to be, — a Father who sought to make 
them truly blessed, and had raised up prophets and 
good men ; it was to bring men to see their Father ; 
to feel him as a living soul, present with them in 
trouble, in temptation, in joy, in all that makes our 
life. This is a work worthy of angels, worthy of 
a son of God, worthy of God. A pious man feels 
God's presence everywhere. He cannot look but 
each foot of space is a text from which Xature 
preaches of Him that is and shall be. He sees His 
works in all the events of human history, — at the 
death of a martyr ; in the passage of a ship laden 
with holy men, over the wilderness of waters ; in 
the discovery of each art and science ; in all reli- 
gious and moral reforms. There is a very evident 
action of the Divine Providence that orders all. 
There was in this work of Jesus. The time and 
place, the circumstances and the men, — all mark 
this as one of the great works of Providence for 
men. Not as if God departed from his laws, — 
which it is almost impious to suppose he should 
ever do, — but by his laws he did the work. It 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



127 



was in this relation that Jesus stood. We try the 
man by his work, measure him by the shadow he 
cast upon the world, and what a man was there ! 

Secondly, the circumstances of the case. We see 
a man contending against odds, one against many, 
and even if that one is in the wrong, we cannot but 
feel an interest in him who maintains such a 
struggle. But when it is a single man fighting 
against numbers and warring for truth and good- 
ness and human rights and divine religion, the 
spectacle is one of the finest pictures of the morally 
sublime that this world can furnish, or fancy can 
devise. Such were the circumstances. All the 
worldliness of the Sadducees ; all the hypocrisy of 
the Pharisees; the pride of the scribes; the theo- 
logical rancor of the priests, rendered all the more 
bitter by the sight of multitudes fed by his word, 
and so forsaking the dross and husks of those 
auricular devotees ; all of the old which had noth- 
ing but age to depend on ; all of corruption which 
feared the light; all of tyranny which knew it 
trod men down to the ground while their blood 
cried to God for vengeance ; all of the forces of 
the State, the train of the temple, — are united 
against this simple soul of Christ in his own great 
work. The world and the Church, the priest and 
the Devil, were leagued against this one holy soul. 
He was fighting the old battle for the souls of the 



128 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



world, — the battle that never is lost at any mo- 
ment, but is always won ; for God carries forward 
the race of men, and holds them up when the 
prophets fail. 

Thirdly, the consequences that have followed 
from the crucifixion have made us regard it 
in this light. How foolish is the race of man ! 
To put down truth by persecution ; put out a 
volcano with a stream of water ; a conflagration 
with oil ! The crucifixion turned attention at once 
to him that died for his faith. Had Jesus lived to 
be seventy, and died as Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob, he would still have been just as much the 
Saviour and Redeemer of the world as now, for 
what lie did for us was to teach the truth, and live 
life. The eyes of men must have been surely 
turned to that beautiful light. At last it must 
have been so ; but as it was, Jesus, lifted on the 
cross, has drawn all men unto him. How soon 
the very cross itself became a symbol of all that 
was dearest and most true ! Men contemplate him 
as suffering, — as suffering through the sins of 
men ; and the warmest sympathy is felt not only 
for his doctrines, but his life, his person ; and our 
hearts glow with enthusiasm at the thought of it. 
The " Father, forgive them " uttered on the cross, 
how much has it done ! We often say Christ died 
for us ; so he did in a certain sense. We are 



THE CRUCIFIXION. 



129 



blessed by his death ; but how much more by his 
life ! We are here not to die, but to live in the 
light of the truth he taught, of the truth he lived. 
His death is for us if it helps us to this ; his life for 
us if we live divine as he ; but if not so, it is for 
us in vain that he lived, in vain that he died. 

You and I are not called on to die, as he ; let us 
take up our cross daily, and do the duties of life 
and bear its burdens. Daily a cross is given us to 
bear, but what Jesus did we may do. Conquer as 
he conquered, for God is near us as to him, and 
ever as ready to aid and bless. Live as he lived, 
a life of truth and love, and his life and death 
have done their work for you. We speak of com- 
munion with Christ. That is a beautiful thought. 
Who does commune with Christ? He that asks 
what is good and right to do, to think, to feel, who 
goes forward in this work, — the Christ-like char- 
acter, life, soul, — he communes with Christ, and is 
with God. In him is the word fulfilled, " We will 
come to him and make our abode with him." 

1842. 



0 



X. 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 

Brethren, 1 count not myself to have apprehended. — Phil. 

iii. 13. 

IN our life and physical growth things come 
gradually on. We are first babes, then chil- 
dren, then youths, then men. From the age we call 
manhood there is also a progress and a nobler 
maturity, which is likewise gradual. This latter 
is not marked with external signs, like the progress 
from babyhood to boyhood and from that to man- 
hood. It is so in intellectual growth. One faculty 
after another is developed ; truth after truth comes 
up in our mind, till the whole heaven opens upon 
us with resplendent stars. The boy fancies the 
limit he will set to his aspirations ; the youth leaps 
over this barrier and sets a further bound to his 
progress, over which the man passes, not knowing 
it is a bound, and fares forth on his pilgrimage up- 
ward and on. The same is true in man's moral 
growth. We have trials in the cradle. The lesson 
of discipline begins early. The boy and the youth 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



131 



have their peculiar temptations ; and gradually 
we get courage and strength to face the moral 
dangers which beset the man. The power of 
religion, too. comes gradually upon us. As chil- 
dren, we turned pale at the thunder, trembling at 
God's angry voice chiding the world. Our bovish 
heart laughed at the rainbow, contented to believe 
that God was appeased again. How we quivered 
at the winter and joyed at the spring, counting 
each snowdrop and honeysuckle as a token of his 
pleasure and satisfaction with us ! But our childish 
conception of God gives way, — a grander idea of 
the All-Perfect fills the bosom of the man. When 
the passionate blood grows cool and the fire-dance 
is over in the veins, the majestic ideas of religion 
take their place in the heart, enlarged and sancti- 
fied and blessed. 

In the visible world there is what philosophy 
calls a law of continuity. All is done gradually, 
nothing by leaps. Invisibly the vegetable and 
animal world approach and intermingle. You 
cannot tell where the mineral kingdom begins, and 
the animal ends. They must be distinguished by 
their centre, not their circumference ; by a type, 
not a limit. There are visible links that connect 
beast and bird, fish and insect. In animals lower 
down you see hints that a man is vet to be. In 
man you see as it were vestiges of the lower ani- 



132 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



mals, a certain bruteness which it is difficult to 
explain, perhaps more difficult to manage. This 
brute element sometimes astonishes you in your- 
self. As the man lives truly, it gradually disap- 
pears ; so it gets weeded out of human nature in 
its growth and cultivation, as cultivation corrects 
the native poison of some domestic plants. You 
see also in yourself elements of a higher being, a 
prophecy of somewhat greater than man. This 
astonishes you perhaps more than the brute ele- 
ment. It is so with the world of moral and reli- 
gious ideas. There also is a progress, a law of 
continuity ; nothing is done by leaps. There is a 
constant reaching upward from Adam to you and 
me, from Abraham to Christ. What a change in 
moral ideas, from the sacrifice of a boy on an 
altar, to be burned with fire, to loving your neighbor 
and your God ! What a change, from the expecta- 
tion of bitter torment and pain, to the promise of 
a heaven of continual growth in a man's qualities ! 
What a progress in two thousand years ! Yet 
there were great men between Abraham and Christ ; 
many prophets in Judea, in Egypt, in Babylon, 
Greece. They helped smooth the way. One by 
one they taught the truth of the gospel, so that 
when Christ came, he had no new thing to teach ; 
he but combined and applied to life what others 
had taught before. Not that he collected his doc- 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 133 

trines in this way, getting a little from Zoroaster, 
a point from Socrates, and a thought from Plato ; 
in his own large heart they sprung up. Abraham 
had passed away. The age of Abraham, the ideas 
of Abraham, and the sayings of Abraham were 
old-fashioned. Men gladly accepted what Moses 
never dreamed of. Did the progress end here ? 
In ideas of morality and religion we have got no 
farther on. There is no getting above love to God 
and man, nothing higher; but in other thoughts 
connected with religion there has been a great 
advance. We know not what were Christ's ideas 
of a future state, except this, that justice would be 
done by a God of love. We do know what was 
Paul's notion of a future state : he expected that 
in his own lifetime, Christ would come in the 
clouds, would snatch up the living and raise the 
dead and lift them up to the clouds and judge 
them, sending the good — at least, the Christians 
— to a state of happiness, the bad to a state of 
misery. We have long outgrown such childish 
notions, though colored by the words of that good 
man and the dreams of I know not how many 
others. You cannot altogether stay the progress 
of the world ; you may retard it ; you may quicken 
it. 

Now, we often stop our growth in wisdom and 
intellectual power, and thus cheat ourselves of the 



13-1 CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 

end we would obtain. This we do because we 
count ourselves to have apprehended all that we 
can know. We are proud, and hate to confess our- 
selves ignorant, or be convicted of mistakes. We 
take up a notion without examination, thus getting 
a judgment without knowledge, then obstinately 
cling to our prejudice. It is a rare thing for a 
man to change any important opinion after five 
and forty. That is not because at forty-five he 
knows all truth, though some seem to think so; it 
is because the man hardens his mind, and will not 
hear. He has fallen into the rut of his own preju- 
dice. Here and there you see a man of great, noble 
ambition, who grows old in living. Xew thought 
accrues even in old age. Such a man never grows 
old ; he lives a perennial youth. Truth attends 
him. A splendid vision goes before him ; in the 
light thereof he walks and is glad. How beautiful 
it is to see such a man, whom experience has not 
made blind, nor knowledge hardened ; whose wis- 
dom is modest, and while he thanks God for a little, 
asks for more. Such a man it is a great joy to 
see. His ideas do not imprison, but make him 
free. Each truth discovered enlarges his mind ; 
each new star he looks on opens new worlds of 
stars. Perpetually does he get nearer to truth. 
Now and then you see such a one in politics, who, 
when old, has the freshness of youth, and from the 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



135 



generation he has outlived, gathers all the wisdom 
they left behind for that generation which has 
grown up beneath his eye, and so unites in himself 
the power of both. I have known one Christian 
minister continually outgrowing the theology in 
which he was bred. You could trace his progress 
by the old garments of theology he had cast off, 
as he outgrew them and went on. Think vou he 
grew less eloquent, less genial, as he grew old ? 
Quite the reverse. Like the fabled swan, his last 
song was the best he sung. Bigotry shunned his 
steps ; new ideas waited on him ; he " by the vision 
splendid" was "on his way attended,' 5 and died 
young and growing, at more than threescore. 

So in religion, in that highest excellence, we 
often stop in our course and think we have ob- 
tained all. We have learned a few truths, and are 
accustomed to a few duties of religion, and have 
tasted a little of its satisfactions. Starting, we call 
ourselves Christians, count ourselves to have appre- 
hended all, and sit down content. Some one comes 
down from the mountain of his piety and tells what 
he has seen and known and felt. We call him 
fool or knave, heretic or unbeliever, at least vision- 
ary, a madman, an infidel, or a deist. Now, no man 
has all truth, each man much error, and he is the 
weaker and the poorer by each truth he neglects, 
by each error he welcomes. When a man closes 



136 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



his mind against the advent of new truth, he turns 
himself out of the paradise which opened its gates 
before him. When he shuts his heart against new 
religious light, he cheats himself all the more. He 
ceases to advance ; he cannot stand still, so visibly 
falls back and dwindles, withers and shrivels up. 
What if we had power to check our physical growth, 
and at eight or ten, satisfied with our stature, 
should arrest our progress, and stop there, dwarfed 
and stunted of our growth, and at threescore 
should have gray hairs and the lines of age on the 
young figure of the boy. We sometimes see such 
pygmies ; they are shown as curiosities. We often 
see dwarfs in religion, pygmies in Christianity, not 
exhibited in shows, but confronting you with their 
moral ugliness in the street, and glorying in their 
shame, setting themselves up as types of men, the 
dwarf mocking at the man. They learned some- 
thing at their mother's knee. The best part of 
many a man's wisdom has come to him thence, 
when she laid her hand, now still in death, on his 
childish head, and smoothed down his silken and 
boyish hair, and taught him of God, of conscience, 
of righteousness, and awaking the devotion of his 
vouns; heart, bade him fly toward heaven on his 
half-fledged wings. The boy learns a little of reli- 
gion, a little of its truth, a little of its duties, and 
a little of its satisfactions, so full of soothing 



CHRIS TIAN AD VANCEMENT. 



137 



charms, so rich in inward peace ; even the boy loves 
these, and goes rejoicing on his boyish way. But 
soon there are cares, temptations, studies not akin 
to religion ; passions are awakened in him ; he gets 
farther from his mother's arms, but no nearer to 
truth, no nearer goodness, farther from God. In 
other things he grows ; Science expands his mind ; 
Experience teaches new lessons. He sees farther 
in intellectual things than his mother saw; but in 
religion he stops where she left him. He learns 
nothing new. Perhaps he repeats in manhood 
the timid prayer which came, spontaneous and 
graceful, from the child's swelling heart. Xow it 
is short and little, not fit for his growth in mind, 
more than the blankets which wrapped his limbs 
in the cradle would fit his bodv. In old aa'e you 
find him with palsied knees, with swimming eyes, 
with feeble hand, aweary for his shroud. He mum- 
bles the same little prayer ; he sees no farther, he 
thinks no deeper, than when a little child at his 
mother's knee. I have not lived many years, but 
long enough to see the face of childhood, ingenuous 
with its peaceful innocence, full of promise as the 
day-star, beautiful as the morning ; to see religion 
fade out of that face ; to see selfishness, rage, and 
lust unite thereon their hideous scrawl and stamp 
out God's image with the Devil's blot. My friends, it 
is a sorry sight. To see a man over whom the sun, 



138 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



blessed and beautiful, has risen and set for many a 
day and many a year, over whom the rainbow has 
spread her wings, and over whom heaven's tent has 
been nightly pitched for half a century, its myriad 
lights leading him upward and onward ; it is a sad 
sight to see a man whom grief and joy have gov- 
erned with alternate sway, who has known the joys 
of youth, the happiness of home, who has rejoiced 
in the name of friend, lover, husband, father, — to 
see him shortened of his growth in religion, con- 
tentedly little, impoverished in his soul, dwarfed in 
spirit, gray-headed, but only a boy. Could we stand 
in bodies that fairly represented our spiritual 
growth, so that our virtues and piety could be meas- 
ured by the eye as our external stature, how we 
should astonish ourselves, what a wonder we should 
be to each other! It would appear perhaps that 
some have grown continually less and less ; they 
shrivel and shrink like a fern in the frost of an 
autumn night, and crackle and become dust like 
that same fern in the sun of the next noonday. 
Oh, it is a sad thought, to ask how many of you 
have seen lovely ones grow little and less and least. 
I cannot answer the question. Your own faces tell 
something of it ; God knows the rest. 

Now and then you see a man who grows contin- 
ually in wisdom, in virtue, in piety. He never 
counts himself to have apprehended all, to have at- 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



139 



tained a man's estate in religion. Prayerfully he 
passes on. Little accessions of unexpected strength 
come to him ; for his work is holy, his wife, his 
children, his church, his God. From the deeps of 
his own soul, perennial supplies come forth which 
his wife, his children, his church, his religion, have 
tried to offer and tried to give. His religion is as 
a river started from a little fountain, fed by last- 
ing snows. It gradually drinks in supplies as it 
runs on, grows wider and deeper. Rising above its 
banks, it blesses meadow and prairie, leaving flowers 
and fruit where its healing waters touch. It re- 
flects in its tranquil bosom the gleam of the city, 
the cool majesty of the stars, and at last without 
noise empties the vast volume of its riches into the 
boundless sea. Could one such a man lift his 
serene forehead and stand in the elevation of his 
well-grown spirit among the rest of us, how like a 
Colossus would he stand ! and we in his shadow 
would dig our dishonorable graves. 

Paul affords one remarkable instance of such a 
man. Bred in religion a Jew of the strictest sect, 
and persecuting the Christians, he is yet no slave 
to his thoughts. He sees the truth of Chris- 
tianity, at length welcomes it to his heart. His 
conversion was the condemnation of his former 
course ; but consistency did not frighten him into 
falsehood. Then he went forward in Christianity. 



140 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



He passed by Judaizing James, temporizing Ce- 
phas, and feared not Jews or Greeks. Nay, he 
feared not to be wiser to-morrow than to-day. He 
counted not himself to have apprehended all truth. 
What he saw, he welcomed and took home, praying 
devoutly for more, — passing forward to the world 
of truth which came to him. Of course he lost 
his old friends among the Jews by the first step ; 
he gained new enemies among the Christians by 
the next. But God was his friend, truth his coun- 
sellor, and wisdom shone down deeper and deeper 
into his soul. Piety and morality he wished to 
dwell with him ; and each year no doubt saw deeper 
satisfaction and a holier tranquillity take posses- 
sion of the man. No doubt he found men enough 
to say, " Paul, stop there, — you have got it all now. 
There is but little truth, and you now have all 
that." Men told him so in the Jewish Church, — 
ay, in the Christian Church. It is always the sin 
of sluggish men to do so. This has been one of 
the sins of the Christian Church. Each little de- 
nomination practically takes this for granted, that 
it has apprehended all truth, all righteousness. A 
man may be ever so pure, with argument ever so 
logical, with intuitions deep, beautiful, holy, and 
true, yet the Church may call him bad names, 
and bid him go and be damned. What a picture ! 
Bodies of prudent men and foolish men, setting up 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



141 



as possessors of all truth, as possessed by no error ! 
Let not us enter into such ways ; let us remember 
that it takes all the churches to preach all the 
gospel ; the whole of mankind toiling through in- 
finite ages to preach all truth. Our fathers are 
barbarians to us, their fathers to them ; we shall 
be in our turn barbarians to coming ages. Let us 
cleave to all we know is true, and welcome each 
new guest as it comes from heaven. Still the 
Spirit speaks for you and me. Truth has a perpet- 
ual morning; its sun breaks ever on the world, 
though we stupidly turn to the west, or close up 
our windows and refuse to look. The true man 
joying in his nature never is satisfied with what he 
has won. What is behind him is little, infinity 
before. He forgets what is behind ; he marches 
on to the greater life before. An artist, after many 
a thought and much patient toil, in some proud 
hour feels his bosom burn, his heart swelling and 
throbbing. He sees in fancy float before him, 
carved out in the viewless air, the figure he 
strives to greet, — the queen of ancient art, or the 
Mother of Christ, or her that sprung, as fable tells, 
from the foaming bosom of the sea, a wonder of 
the deep. He sees this float by in more than mor- 
tal loveliness. He toils and spreads it on the can- 
vas, or bids the mimic marble waken into his 
dream. At last the work is done. Wondering 



142 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



men behold the finished form, revealing dreams 
brighter far than this ; but he that created this 
brilliant fancy and copied in stone, a fossil thought, 
the petrifaction of a great idea, — he has gone off to 
fairer things, and nobler forms have waited on him. 
He looks not with satisfaction at his work. Gen- 
ius cannot look back, cannot repose in its own 
achievement, but looks forth to greater wonders 
till age chills the ideas in the fountain of life, and 
makes the eye dim and the hand to tremble. So 
must it be with us. Have we done little ? Let 
not that discourage us, but waken us and send 
us forth, though shamefaced, yet strong to manly 
progress. Have we done much ? Let it be no stim- 
ulus to vanity, still less to pride. Let us hope 
more than we remember, and strive more than 
we rest. Then shall our life be a triumph. The 
follies which bewildered, the passions which en- 
slaved us, shall turn to be our servants. What 
we once despaired of as but a visionary dream — 
so bright, so fair, so distant, and so high — shall 
come down to us and bless us evermore. Is there 
ever a time when the child of God can fold his 
arms and say, " Lord, I have apprehended ; I 
have done all " ? 

When Job was a young man, he surpassed his 
fellows in wisdom, goodness, in every manly grace. 
The blessing of him that was ready to perish fell 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



143 



on his ears, for he respected the poor and the 
needy. The favors of his God did not awaken 
avarice. The beggar, the orphan, the widow in the 
land of Uz, nightly thanked God, that had made 
the sun, the moon, the earth, and Job. But Job's 
heart waxed contented within him ; the shadow of 
his achievement blasted his aspirations. Then he 
said, " Lo ! I have attained ; what more is there for 
me ?" So he but contented himself. He sought no 
more truth, nor welcomed the angels who rode on 
the sunbeams, who hung in the lily, or reposed in 
the fragrance of the flowering grape. The coun- 
sellors, with fair majestic face, with thoughts each 
day about the best, found no notice with Job ; he 
grew no more. So the angel of disease struck him. 
His joints were bound ; his breath was an abhor- 
rence to his friends. Then reproach came into his 
heart. He moaned as the great deep in his torment. 
The voice of El Shadai spake to him : " 0 Job, thou 
hast lost the splendor of thy manhood resting in 
what is done. No more be satisfied with thyself. 
Thou wast but a candle of light ; the heaven of 
suns is over thee. In thy good life hast thou 
gathered but a pebble-stone, while the shore glit- 
ters with pearls and diamonds and gold, each wave 
disclosing treasures new. Be ashamed, and arise." 
And Job arose and began anew. Each victory 
tempted him to new adventures. The fruit of 



144 



CHRISTIAN ADVANCEMENT. 



one good work was the seed of a thousand more. 
When the angel gathered him to heaven, he tow- 
ered over men there, taller than Abraham and 
Moses, and God blessed him and said, " Sit there, 
my faithful and noblest son ; I will make thee Lord 
over many things." 



1844. 



XI. 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

1 prayed, and understanding was given me, — Wisdom of 
Solomon vii. 7. 

IN all the forms of worship into which the one 
universal religion is divided, a large place has 
been set apart for prayer. It has been a doctrine 
dear to the human race, that man can come into 
the mysterious presence of the Infinite One whose 
power is the strength of the world and whose wis- 
dom pours out the wondrous beauty which encom- 
passes and enriches the earth and sky and all that 
they contain, whose love blesses what it made and 
beautifies. It is a doctrine dear to the heart of 
mankind, that through prayer we can hold com- 
munion with the soul of all, receive revelations 
from the very God, and be inspired by him. The 
belief in this intercourse with our Father rises 
spontaneous in the simple heart of childhood, and, 
as instinctive trust, swells outward in the new- 
born soul. In primitive nations of the world's 
infancy, the same instinctive trust appears. In all 

the forms of religion you find this. It meets you 

10 



146 PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 



with the savage and the civilized ; in all states of 
progress ; in all the degrees of growth in religion, 
— that of fear, of hope, and of love. As the race 
grows wiser, it does not outgrow this ; as it grows 
better and more pious, it places the more confidence 
therein, appeals oftener to the abstract Justice, 
Truth, Love. Philosophy comes up, with its les - 
sons learned from painful thought, and confirms 
therewith the impulsive sentiments that rise un- 
bidden in primeval hearts. Yet there is a period 
in which men doubt thereof. The man has out- 
grown the instinctive sentiment of boyhood ; he 
has not attained the lofty philosophy of manhood. 
He once thought that prayer moved God ; he sees 
the wrong of that, and doubts even what it can 
mean ; but he grows again, recovers the sponta- 
neous nature of the child, and wins the serious fore- 
cast of the man there. Prayer is still precious as 
ever, — alike a means that helps us forward, and an 
end we rejoice in as good in itself. In different 
churches of the world you shall find it clothing 
itself in various forms. In various stages of a 
man's progress there are various degrees of this. 
You read the works of men famed for this holy 
life, — men that rise far above the common crowd 
in goodness and in piety; you shall find that they 
speak of the power of prayer to purify and to re- 
fine, to exalt the man. They dwell on it in song 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 147 

and oration, telling men it calms and soothes and 
heals and blesses the wounded heart. They shall 
tell you that it lifted them to God, armed them 
with strength for the sore trials of the world, 
lifted them up when fallen, overtaken by sin, and 
sent them forth anew on their pilgrimage, gird- 
ing their loins with strength and anointing their 
shield for victory at last. Did these men tell idle 
dreams ? Bunyan, Fox, Fenelon, "Ware. Channing, 
with their noble friends of kindred soul, though 
differing in the garb that clothed their faith, all 
tell of this, — not in madness, but in the sobriety 
of holiness and the calmness of reasonable men 
who knew what they spoke, and wrote what they 
oft had felt. Such men represent the self-con- 
sciousness of mankind on matters of inward 
religion ; and their life gives weight to their 
words. 

Perhaps it is difficult to tell what is the soul of 
prayer, but it is not difficult to feel what it is ; 
it is the man's aspiring after some higher good. 
Dissatisfied with ourselves, we turn toward the 
ideal of all perfection, and in thought fly toward 
that sublime and universal presence which opens 
ever before us. Dissatisfied with the world, sick 
of its disappointments and weary with chasing its 
follies, we turn toward the fountain of all spiritual 
influence and there renew our strength, and come 



148 PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

back again strong for our duty, patient under trials 
and capable of all that Providence demands of us. 
There are external things that help to prayer, — a 
chosen time, a place endeared to you by the old 
and long-cherished associations of days gone by, a 
form to which you have been used, words that you 
pour forth in the eloquent moment of your devo- 
tion ; but these are not the prayer. That is deeper 
than the outer helps. It is not in the time nor 
place, the form nor the words, that prayer resides. 
That lies deeper still. It is the sentiment within 
the heart, confiding in its Father, and seeking a 
good not realized as yet. It may use the words of 
another ; and as the young eaglet follows its parent 
eagle up the sky, be aided thus by such as go be- 
fore. It may use the first words it thinks out 
itself anew, or with no words ; but thoughts and 
feelings only may pray on, and none the less come 
close to God and return to earth laden with bless- 
ings from that divine presence, as the bee comes 
back from the early flowers of spring. It is not at 
all times that a man feels or can feel this aspira- 
tion after greater good ; so it is not at all times 
that he can pray in his highest elevation. Nay, 
though he use the words of devotion, the soul of 
prayer breathes not out from the lips that move. 
The robin and the thrush sing not all the year, but 
only when they feel the genial morn of new crea- 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 149 

tive life. When they have no song to sing, no 
sentiment to put in song, they are silent then, and 
do not profane their voice. There are times when 
we feel cold and dead, — we know not why; the 
perishable body weighs down the mind ; we can do 
little more than with the publican smite upon our 
breast and say, " Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." 
Our feeling of humiliation keeps us low. So in 
our common daily state, when nothing interrupts 
the usual ebb and flow of our affairs, it often 
happens that we desire but little, are contented 
with ourselves, and seem to expect but little. 
Then our prayers will be mainly prayers of silent- 
ness or prayers of memory, — repetitions for what 
we once brought back when with more vigorous 
wing we mounted up to God. The brightest clay 
has its night ; the August summer ends in winter 
at the last. But things occur that rouse us from 
our common state. Some unlooked-for good for- 
tune befalls us ; some new hope is born into our 
household ; some sorrow lays waste our hopes ; 
sickness invades our household ; death seizes some 
friend, — a parent, wife, or child, — tearing them 
at once from our sight ; some sin, perhaps, that we 
in a rash moment committed before high heaven, — 
these things awake us from our usual state, and 
open with rough or gentle hand the gate of heaven. 
We see the littleness of our attainments, and look 



150 PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

up to our ideal for something more permanent 
than our friends, something more exalted than our 
own character. Then we fly toward our ideal. 
We rise above our actual state. We look back on 
the things we have striven for, — the honors, the 
distinctions of life, the poor vanities for which so 
often we have wasted our strength, — they seem all 
little and without worth. We look back on the 
real good things that we have done, — on the plain 
humble duties of our daily life ; on our efforts to 
help those dependent on us ; our attempts to con- 
trol our lives by goodness and piety, to live a blame- 
less life, though with great denial of ourselves, — 
and these seem beautiful, priceless in our sight and 
in the sight of Infinite Justice and never-ending 
love. We look back on wasted opportunities ; on 
gifts given by God, yet perverted by us ; on sins 
that we have committed, known only to our- 
selves, — sins committed presumptuously or in 
some unlucky moment when the sophistry of pas- 
sion has blinded our eyes, — then we see all these 
things as thev are. We mourn at the waste ; we 
weep at the sin ; but we look up to that fair ideal 
which comes upon our sight, and with great resolu- 
tion long to re-ascend, to climb farther up, to be 
what we contemplate. We look back on the disas- 
ters which trouble us, on our disappointments and 
losses. When we looked for a storm, a rainbow 



PRAYER AXD INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 151 



spread its wings, a promise of fairer skies. We 
fly out of our common consciousness into the 
higher realm of truth, goodness, religion, and in 
our thoughts we clothe ourselves with these virtues. 
We see the fact of our life, little and poor and low. 
We see too the idea of a perfect life, its beauty, its 
fitness for us. We are in that moment the excel- 
lence we contemplate. We wish to be so forever ; 
that is our prayer. We may use words ; they 
help our thought; they are often the counters 
with which we think ; or we may do all this with- 
out words. Let us each use what suits him best. 
The form is personal, but the spirit of prayer is 
universal. 

This exercise of prayer in this sense, as we feel 
it now and then, is powerful and deep, full of 
strong excitement ; not rapturous, but calm, tran- 
quil, and composing. Thoughts flash in upon the 
man that come not in his humbler hours. New 
truths come oftenest in these brief moments of 
prayer, for the man is in his highest state of intel- 
lectual work. Then, too, that element within 
which feels and lives, desires the perfect, and that 
too which wills, — all these are powerfully moved. 
It is no wonder, then, that deeper thoughts and 
feelings infinite do stir and burn within us at such 
an hour. It is in a lofty mood, above the common 
drowsiness of life, that the poet strikes out his 



152 PRAYER AXD INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 



words of electric fire, the " canticles of joy and 
woe ; " that the world repeats u the litanies of na- 
tions." It is in no vulgar mood of mind or heart 
that the artist, painter, or sculptor, or he who on 
the viewless air carves out the graceful thought 
that speaks in music unto man, — it is in no sleepy 
mood that he achieves all this. It is with great 
intensity of thought that the philosopher, long pon- 
dering over the problems of soul, discovers at last 
the solving truth which makes the riddle plain ; 
so the real prayer which shapes a man's future life, 
and sokes his riddle, comes from a deep action of 
the whole man. The preparations are made, the 
apparatus ready, and all is long awaiting; but in 
one moment the wires are joined, and the electric 
spark flames forth. Water lay about the altar, 
but fire came, and kindling the sacrifice, licked up 
the stream. Prayer is spiritual study, a vehement 
action of the man aspiring after excellence. It is 
to the Christian man what the hour of mental 
action is to the poet and philosopher, — the period 
of creative work. As the poet and philosopher 
have their hours of interior work, when thoughts 
come flashing upon them with such a force and 
beauty as in common hours they never come ; as 
in these times (brief though they be) they project 
out of their hearts their mighty work, — so has 
the religious man, or he who strives to become 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 153 

such, his hours, when the spirit of devotion comes 
over him and touches his deepest heart. He feels 
the greatness of man, but the littleness of his own 
achievement, — how little when measured by that 
vast capability he feels and knows ! His ideal rises 
higher than ever, but for that reason is never 
clearly seen. His valley of humiliation seems 
lower yet, measured by the stars. He sees the 
fact of his life, how unlike that ideal ! he is a dwarf, 
stunted of his proper growth. He rises in fancy 
up to this ideal ; for the moment, he becomes it, 
and is what he should be. This moment is the 
idealization of his life. He sees himself, not as 
he seems, not as you see him, but as he really is 
in his nature. He resolves to be what God made 
him to be, and for one moment he is the complete 
man. Common cares appear beautiful, common 
duties desirable ; great difficulties seem little. He 
thinks to make them alwavs so. He asks the aid 
of God in his enterprise. His nature is deeply 
moved, and an abiding impression is made on his 
heart. The iron character of the man is molten, 
and the image of heaven is stamped thereon, and 
the hardening iron holds it forever. 

Now, it is no fiction that in such moods we have 
a connection with the God of all more really than 
in our common hours, We break away from 
habit ; we see ourselves as we are, our faults, fol- 



154 PRAYER AXD INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 



lies, littlenesses, sins. Underneath all we feel the 
greatness of our nature, that seems as the ocean, 
so broad, so deep, so strong ; our personal charac- 
ter as the little streams which run down from the 
sand. The vast heaven lies mirrored in the trick- 
ling stream and in the ocean's broad expanse. We 
feel the presence of the all-surrounding Father, 
who is truth and love ; and he, as truth and love, 
comes down into our heart, is made manifest, and 
abides with us. We have a feeling of his nearness, 
a repose of heart in him. This is communion with 
God. New truth, new revelation, flows into us. 
We make his thought our thought. We see truths 
not by reflection, but intuitively they start up in 
us. There is no change on God's part ; he is ever 
the same. But there is a great change on our 
part. We feel and see his presence, perceive his 
truth, and welcome it. The effect on us is deep 
and beautiful. The mind is made thereby steady 
and composed, for it works not against, but accord- 
ing to its nature. It is not merelv a communing: 
with ourselves, but with God. We eet not only 
what we carry out, but more. Every prayer will 
not be a communion with God. We do not always 
get up so high, — as the tree blossoms but once a 
year ; but wisdom comes through prayer, under- 
standing is given. We know ourselves better, for 
in such moments we see ourselves with something 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 155 

of the impersonality in which God sees us, and 
feel not only the character of the one man, but the 
nature of man in us. The sophistry of passion, of 
self-love, of pride, is seen through ; we forget our 
selfish onesidedness ; we see our nature as well as 
our character. The moral sense is aided bv such 
efforts. We breathe the cool, calm air, and judge 
not with the partiality common to our self-love, nor 
with the despair which failures bring, but with an 
internal judgment of justice and truth. We hope 
much of ourselves, for we see that our sin was a 
mistake, a failure. We resolve to wander no more, 
but pursue straight forward the one right path. 
We feel a deep confidence in God, to whom we 
have thus approached so near. We feel and know 
that he will order all things for our good, will lead 
us home at last. How can we doubt at such a 
moment ? In the hour of most imminent peril, 
when thus we turn to God, his angel comes to 
strengthen us ; in our agony heaven opens ; and 
better than ten legions of angels, he is with us and 
has not left us alone. 

In such moments, too, our charity toward 
others is made strong and active. When we ask 
to be restored to God, how can we refuse to re- 
store ourselves to our brother ? All high affections 
of man fly in a flock toward God. Waken one of 
the Christian graces, — Faith, Hope, or Charity, — 



156 PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

all the rest awake ; for they have but one life, and 
when one wakes and lives, then do all the others 
also. "Would you know the effect of habits of prayer 
of this sort ? Some of you know it already ; some 
of you have seen and felt the power. But to make 
it apparent, watch the history and see the end of 
some man who lives at random, careless where the 
stream of life shall bear him, with no ideal of a 
life, with no aspirations and with no prayer. I 
speak not of words ; he may deluge his prayers with 
them. See how he drifts on in life, unsatisfied and 
unsatisfying; aiming at little and attaining no 
more ; successful in petty schemes of personal 
aggrandizement, but coming out of the world less 
of a man than he came into it. Look at such an 
one ; see how manliness fades away in him. His 
face becomes vulgar, his life vulgar, because his 
soul first became a common, a gossiping, a trifling, 
a little, and a vulgar soul. You see enough of such 
men anywhere. Contrast such an one with the 
man who set out with an idea, who pondered often 
in his course and looked up and looked forward ; 
who measured himself, not by the men about him, 
but by the high ideas of justice, piety, and love ; 
who took praise as penance, and lived above ambi- 
tion, not asking praise of men, but desiring it of 
God ; who sought not only the company of wise 
men and good men, but looked in prayer to com- 



PRAYER AXD INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 157 



panionship with God, and in the light thereof saw 
his own character, aims, and hopes, and drew down 
inspiration from God most high to cheer and light 
him through this world. What a difference be- 
tween the two ! What a difference in the life em- 
ployed here, in the result achieved, in the character 
which they carry out of this world ! If the senti- 
ment of prayer be carefully cherished, it will color 
with its own beauty all this outward and this inner 
life we lead. It will lift us now and then to God, and 
we shall pray great prayers, and see great truths, 
and feel the greatness of religious consolation steal 
down into our hearts. We shall not always rise 
to our loftiest elevation of thought or feeling, — 
nay, we shall seldom get so high. Once in a year 
perhaps, perhaps but once in a life. Yet from that 
height shall we finally see the green scions of life 
that we carry in our bosoms budding, blossoming, 
and becoming fragrant and full of fruit. So the 
water-lily buds at the bottom of some stagnant 
pool or in the oozy margent of a languid stream, 
and at length lifts up its head to the waters, opens 
its cup, unfolds its saffron and its snow to the 
genial wooing of the sun and air, and for a while 
gives out the fragrance it has long shut in ; is fer- 
tilized by its genial dalliance with the sky, then 
crooks and contracts its crinkling stem, sinks down 
beneath the water's top, rises no more, but silently 



158 PRAYER AXD IXTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

matures its fruit, and in the unconscious water 
scatters abroad its seeds, the fairest of Nature's 
flowers. 

There are seasons of the day which invite a man 
to pause and commune with himself ; yes, to rise 
above that, to commune with his Father, who seeth 
in public and in secret too. Morning calls you to 
a new day ; it will bring its trials, its temptations. 
Old ones will come again ; new ones may break 
freshlv on vou. Is it not wise when vou beein, fresh 
from repose, your daily task, to pause to consider, 
to ask, " What will be my dangers to-day ? Shall 
I engage in only what is right, or is there not dan- 
ger also of doing that which is wrong?" Is it not 
wise in such an hour to rise into that spiritual 
world which overlooks and overhangs our common 
life ? Is it not wise to lift up your heart to him 
who gave you all that you are, to feel though but 
for a moment that you are praising God, whose 
beautiful laws shall bless you if you keep them ? 
When night summons you to repose, as darkness 
draws a curtain, fold on fold, about the earth, and 
the mysterious stars lead up the thoughts to worlds 
higher and more tranquil than the sun, is it not 
well also to pause and ask, " What have I done ? 
What have I been ? What duty left undone ? 
Has the day brought unkind feelings, or been wit- 
ness to unworthy deeds ?" Is it not well to rise 



PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 159 

up to the thought of the beautiful presence of 
God, to feel yourself at rest with him ? Conceive 
to yourself two men. Let one pursue this course, 
though but for ten minutes each day, and those 
caught in the pauses of his toil. The other, who 
thinks never of such things, lies down at night like 
the tired ox in his crib, and like him rises in the 
morning, alike regardless of the idea he should con- 
template. What different men shall these two men 
become as the years try them ! Which, think you, 
shall be the more manly, which the more free ? 

It is not the shadow of prayer that I speak of, 
but the substance, the spirit thereof; not words, 
but life. Why tell of its effects ? It is its own 
glad recompense. It is the poetry of religion, not 
less true than the plain prose, but only more beau- 
tiful and touching to the heart. Prayer is the 
idealization of the Christian's growth, the poetry of 
his holy life, the blossoming of his religion. It 
does not give a man raptures, but it does afford 
real solid delights. Let any man, young or old, set 
apart one half-hour, or the half of that, for com- 
muning with himself and his God each day; let 
him shut out the world and open his windows to- 
ward truth and God, and seriously think and really 
pray, — it will be not without rich fruit in his life. 
He will give over sin, will constantly ascend ; and 
when from his highest intercourse with the Divine 



160 PRAYER AND INTERCOURSE WITH GOD. 

he comes back, he, like Moses, will not know how 
his life and look are radiant with his soul, but his 
prayer will shine in his daily life. To his highest 
height he will seldom rise, however. His daily 
prayers may be but repetitions of his one great 
prayer, but he shall go long in the strength of that 
one, and long find peace. I am sure that some of 
you know well the meaning and the worth of this. 
You have felt the consciousness of weakness and 
found strength, perhaps the consciousness of sin, 
and have found comfort even for that. I know 
that you have felt that God is near you, with 
you, in you ; and from your prayer you have come 
back comforted, equal to any fate, ready to live. 
Would it were so with all ; that the young man full 
of hope, impulsive energies driving him on, the 
world's business inviting his work, — that the young 
man might pause in this hurrying life of ours, 
retire within the secret place of his soul, kneel at 
the fountain of living waters, and be baptized with 
the spirit of strength that he might win victories in 
life ! Would that the old man might pause till the 
whirlwind has gone by, and lend an ear to the still 
small voice which speaks to the man in prayer! 
for it is the voice of God that calls to rest. 



1845. 



XIL 



CHRISTIANITY IN CONTACT WITH 
HEATHENISM. 

Paul dwelt two ichole years in his own hired house, and received 
all that came in unto him. — Acts xxviii. 30. 

EVERY new thought is a revolution ; a great 
thought, a great revolution. Every contriv- 
ance of man, a printing press or steam-engine, a 
church or a State, was a thought before it be- 
came a thing. Silently the idea comes out of the 
obscurity of one man's mind and incarnates itself 
among powers that be in the world, changing all 
other things about it. Men try to disguise this 
fact from themselves and from one another ; but 
it is written by God on the leaf of fate that truth 
shall displace all falsehood, and therewith bring 
to the ground whatever rests on such a foundation. 
Truth builds up its new edifice on its own deep-laid 
basis, to shelter men and provoke their admira- 
tion. It wars with and destroys all not in accord- 
ance with itself and its institutions. Examples 

enough of this truth shall we see everywhere. 

11 



162 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



Jesus stood up, a new fact in the world, just 
from God, brand new on the earth, and he was a 
revolution. He stood on the one side, and Judaism 
stood on the other. The two were mutually con- 
tradictory ; they could not be reconciled : they 
could no longer live together. Yet the Jews reck- 
oned themselves the foremost people of the world. 
They were the foremost to reject Christianity, for 
they saw that Judaism and Christianity could not 
dwell safely together ; they would not intermingle ; 
the spirit of the two was terribly hostile. 

The church at Jerusalem never flourished much. 
Paul and Peter had to beg contributions at Ephe- 
sus, Pisidia, Antioch. and even in Corinth, for the 
mother church at Jerusalem. That was not all. 
That church clung to Judaism to the last. Christ 
said, Xew wine in new bottles. The Christian 
church at Jerusalem put it into the old bottles 
of Judaism, and declared it would keep in none 
but old bottles, — the older the safer. The conse- 
quences were easy to foresee : the bottles burst ; 
the wine ran out, — spoiled, besides, before it ran 
out ; and both perished together. The church at 
Jerusalem never came to much; it was a Jewish 
church always. Its first leaders were circumcised 
Jews ; they clung to Hebrew rites, forms, and old 
wives' fables, as a boy that cannot swim clings to 
a handful of floating sea-weed, and goes down 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



163 



with it in his grasp. So went down the church 
at Jerusalem. You will ask, " Why so ? Had they 
not the chairs of the apostles, the first gospel in 
Hebrew, etc. ? " Yes, they had all that and more. 
They had the sepulchre of Christ, but Christianity 
they had not. They were wedded to the old ; they 
said, "All of the Old Testament is from God, and 
we must never let go the show-bread of tradition 
for the sake of the real bread of life, which Christ 
gives us out of heaven." They sewed the new 
cloth of Christianity, in its native virgin holiness, 
to the old garments of the Jews, which had been 
worn in Egypt, in the desert, not without holes, 
and were soiled with the wear and tear of two 
thousand years. No wonder the new " took from 
the old," and the rent became worse. There were 
two parties among the Christians, very soon after 
the death of Jesus, — as soon as Christianity had 
any development and the new Christians became 
self-conscious. There were the Jewish party and 
the Liberal party ; Peter's party and Paul's party. 
The Jewish party insisted that Christianity was 
only a modified Judaism ; that Moses was as good 
as the Messiah ; and he that took the latter took 
the first, -and became a Jew before he was a Chris- 
tian. It seems remarkable to us, but he who 
knows mankind well is seldom astonished at an 
absurdity. The Liberal party left Christianity 



164 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



more free, did not put the little Jewish girl's gar- 
ments on the full-grown woman. They gave her a 
bridal robe suited to her stature and becoming her 
beauty. The Jewish party among the Christians 
was a curse then to the world. It was the smell of 
the mould that clung about the feet of the Christian 
tree. That party has been dead more than sixteen 
hundred and fifty years ; but its successors live now, 
and are to Christianity what their forefathers were 
then, — a curse. Paul grew tired of this party. 
They fettered him with their phylacteries, tried to 
feed him with their show-bread ; made him comply, 
shave his head, serve tables, and walk after the 
ordinances. He tried it for a while, and became 
a Jew to the Jews that he might gain them ; but 
finding it better to be Paul than a Jew, he turned 
off to the Gentiles. It is curious to see that all 
his trouble came from the Jews, the foremost 
nation of the earth, as they thought themselves. 

At Antioch, in Pisidia, he preached Christianity 
in the synagogue. The Jews went off. The Gen- 
tiles asked to hear it again ; they heard and were 
glad ; but the Jews drove Paul out of their courts. 
So they did at Iconium, at Lystra, at Thessalonica, 
at Berea, at Corinth, when heathen Gallio drove 
them out of the courthouse. Thev it was that 
seized him in the temple at Jerusalem, when he 
was complying with the old rites, not as a Christian, 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



165 



but as a Jew. They swore an oath neither to eat 
nor drink till they had slain Paul. They gave 
him all his perils, drove him from his country, and 
forced him to appeal to Csesar. These things are 
instructive, and are rich in lessons for this day, 
and days yet to come, no doubt. They drove Paul 
away ; and he went unto the Gentiles. It served 
him no longer to be a Jew to the Jews. It was a 
pity that he ever tried to be anything but Paul. 
He goes to Rome a prisoner, at the hands of his 
own nation. Behold the Christianity rejected by 
"the foremost people of all the world,' 5 goes to 
the heathen to make its fortune. 

Christianity came to Rome in the person of Paul, 
in a period of great revolution. Men had out- 
grown their religion. No, not their religion ; there 
is no outgrowing that. They had outgrown their 
theology, and become disgusted with religion, for 
they thought it was theology and nothing more. 
The Greek philosophy was getting taught in Rome ; 
not understood, for the Romans never understood 
it much. They were a practical people who never 
took to philosophy. It was a period of great con- 
fusion, a crisis in the world's affairs, wiien religion 
seemed to have faded out of the popular mind, 
only the show of religion taking its place. There 
were great men and good men and pious men, 
no doubt, in Rome at that time ; but the popular 



166 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



attention did not set toward religion. It was 
the worst place, a worldly man would have said, 
to bring a new religion. Roman literature was 
fully mature ; its fruits hung rich and ripe over 
the heads of the multitude, — far over their heads ; 
for the people there was no literature save the 
edict of the Consul proclaiming a new levy of sol- 
diers, or of the Praetor announcing a new show of 
gladiators, or a feast for the people. Behold Chris- 
tianity at Rome in collision with the old religion 
of the State, with the new philosophy of the 
Greeks, with the scepticism of the cultivated, the 
licentiousness of the debauchee, the arrogance of 
the proud, and the squalid wretchedness of the pro- 
letary, — the slaves who crawled as worms in the 
filth of the world's capital, which was also the sink 
of the world. Here was Christianity to stand or 
fall. Paul appealed to Caesar. He dwelt a whole 
year in his own hired house with the soldiers who 
kept him, as the fashion was in those days, and 
taught Christianity to all comers. They show the 
house at Rome to this day, in the Corso under a 
church, where he dwelt those two memorable years. 
It was a curious spectacle. The most important 
man then living comes to Rome a prisoner, and lives 
two years with the soldiers that kept him in his 
own hired house. The world seldom sees such a 
spectacle. It might see it often, would the world 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 167 

clear its eyes. Then came the controversy between 
heathenism and Christianity. Christ condemned 
Judaism directly, fittingly, and in good set speech ; 
nothing could be plainer. He condemned heathen- 
ism by implication, — only by implication, for he 
lived in a Jewish and not a Gentile country, and 
spoke of the sins and follies rife and about him. 

At Rome all the old religions had found a home ; 
thev were mutually tolerant of one another. The 
heathen Romans are hardly treated at the hands of 
our Christian divines, and all religious merit denied 
them. If men were more in the habit of reading 
before thev condemned, their sentence would be of 
a little more value. The popular religion at Rome 
taught there was a God, to be served with justice, 
righteousness, a good life ; that there was a future 
state of retribution ; that God judged all nations ; 
that man was an immortal soul. But they, like the 
Jews, coupled religion with idle forms, and often 
made it to consist in those forms. Foolish priests 
did so ; let us pity their blindness. Wise men 
laughed at the popular forms and the popular be- 
liefs. It had become fashionable to disbelieve the 
popular form of religion, and not yet fashionable to 
have any positive belief to take its place. The 
popular mythologies of the Romans, like those 
of the Jews, ascribed unworthy actions often to 
God. A man can seldom be better than his concep- 



168 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



tion of the God he worships ; a nation never. The 
Roman mythologies, like all others, had an effect 
on the people, often a bad effect. Then, too, but a 
low value was set on man. This is the character- 
istic feature of the old civil policy of Greece and 
Rome, — that the State was all, and the individual 
nothing. He was for the State, — not it for him. 
It had absolute rights ; he only derivative, secondary 
rights, — nay, not rights, but privileges only. The 
" rights of man " is a phrase not many hundred years 
old, wholly unknown, I think, in those days. Sla- 
very was reckoned as natural an institution in Rome 
as it is at this day 1 in South Carolina. It was 
deemed more than patriarchal, a natural institution. 
However, it was not peculiar; nearly all nations 
held to it, though not the Jews in Christ's time. The 
father had an unconditioned and uncontrolled right 
over the fortune and life of his son so long as that 
father lived. Women had no rights. Powers they 
surely had, — the conquerors of the world felt that 
in every limb, — but no legal rights. The condition 
of women is the darkest side of ancient civilization. 
It was nowhere worse than at Rome. 

With the wealth that successful war brought to 
Rome, came luxury in one class and the most squalid 
poverty in another. Out of luxury there came the 
sect of the Epicureans, who placed the chief good in 

1 In 1845.— Ed. 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 169 



pleasure. Such were most of the wealthy. Maecenas 
was a type of them. As the natural antithesis there 
came the Stoics, who denied that pain was an evil. 
Hard, iron men were they, who comprised in their 
ranks most of the bold virtue of the State, and 
most too of the patriots. In the decline of faith 
there sprang up the Sceptics, who thought nothing 
could be known certainly ; even natural philosophy 
was to them one of the most uncertain things. 
The most useful sect possibly was the Eclectics, 
men that chose what they saw good in the other 
three, — Epicureans, Stoics, or Sceptics. Of this 
class was Cicero, the last great man that Rome 
produced, — a diplomatic man, moreover, who in 
his care for the public never forgot himself, but a 
man who certainly foresaw many of the truths of 
Christianity. Here, too, were followers of almost 
every mode of religion the world had heard of : 
the worshippers of Thor, from Britain and Saxony, 
the Celts and the Cimbri, the Spaniard, the Um- 
brian, the Fire-worshipper, and the Egyptian, — all 
met together. Human sacrifices were offered in 
the Forum before the birth of Christianity, and till 
Paul's coming to Rome. Conquered nations came 
as slaves openly ; their deities came in secret, but 
as masters. Rome was a miniature of the world, 
its nations, its religion, its wealth, its wants. Be- 
hold Christianity at issue with this class of religions ! 
Here is the profession of Christianity as Paul set it 



170 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



forth, — I purposely leave off many technical matters 
which he may have laid stress on, and talk only of 
the more important he put forth: "There is but 
one God of all nations. He is no respecter of 
persons, but looks equally on Jew and Gentile, 
bond and free. All distinctions of race and rank 
are nothing before him. He has planted his law 
in the hearts of all, — Gentile and Jew. All have 
departed from that law, — the Jews, who had much, 
and the Greeks, who had little. Each knew the 
way and the truth and the life, but departed there- 
from. They became slaves to the flesh, and re- 
ceived the wages of sin, — death. Look around," 
said he, " and behold your society, your impotent 
laws, your idols that are nothing, your great men 
that are confounded. But God in mercy sent 
Jesus to seek and save. Before him there is 
neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free. Trust no 
longer in the flesh to work its unrighteousness ; 
live to the Spirit ; overcome evil with good ; follow 
after righteousness ; let good works abound ; abhor 
evil ; cling to the good. The best three things are, 
faith in God, hope in yourself, and charity toward 
men ; and the last is the best of the three. Offer 
no more sacrifices ; Jesus is the last sacrifice, 
enough for all men. Glory not in man, nor in 
your philosophy, nor in the old wives' stories of 
the Jews ; but seek the truth, hold fast to what is 
good. The letter killeth ; the spirit enlivens ; old 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 171 



things are passed away, — all is become new. Be 
no longer slaves to the law of sin and death, but 
Christ's free men. All the world is full of burdens ; 
let the strong help the weak. Judgment shall 
overtake us all, Christ come back in the clouds, 
the world soon end, and we all have spiritual 
bodies. Repent in time ; God waits, and Christ 
intercedes. God's Spirit shall help you." 

Such were the chief doctrines Paul set forth at 
Rome. Institutions were little ; man was great ; 
the universal spirit of Christianity took the place 
of the little patriotism and devotion to the State 
which hitherto belittled men and cursed them. 
Never was there a stronger antithesis than here. 
On the one side, confusion and uncertainty among 
doctrines, in the hands of the most despotic power ; 
on the other, the most positive doctrines most posi- 
tively laid down, but by a man who lived in a hired 
house, a prisoner kept by soldiers. The old spirit 
was narrow as the walls of a city ; the new broad 
as heaven itself. Soon Christianity began to do 
its work ; as the fire shines in the night, so truth 
among men. At Paul's second captivity, some 
years after the first, he tells us that his bonds were 
manifest in the Emperor's palace ; but still few 
famous men came over to Christianity. In the first 
two and a half centuries perhaps not one of the 
more distinguished families of Rome, but first 



172 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



there came many of the humbler, and next of the 
more wealthy and cultivated. In a very few years 
the number of Christians was great, the main 
work was done. Humble men went first, then the 
greater, and at last the greatest. What wrought 
the change, think you, and led the heathen of Rome 
to become Christians ? If men be as we are so 
often told, it was strange for them to forsake so 
easy a faith as the old and embrace so hard a 
one as the new, especially when it cost some- 
thing besides. He that became a Christian at 
Rome did not sit down in a respectable church, in 
his comfortable pew, and listen to a learned man 
flattering his vices and gliding smoothly over the 
surface of things, never hurting men's feelings, 
never touching a private or a public sin, — no such 
thing then. The early Christian followed strong 
but rude leaders of a despised nation and a sect 
abhorred. He worshipped in the tombs under the 
city, in secret, at night. He went with his fellows, 
and together they blessed God. Toil and trouble 
followed him. He took the vow of poverty and 
disgrace. He lived a clean life, holy, acceptable 
unto God, — a reasonable service, but a hard one. 
There was nothing in Christianity to tempt the 
senses ; no pomp in the streets, no famous men 
to command respect, no costly temple gleaming 
under the Italian sun to amaze the young and fix 



CHRISTIANITY AXD HEATHENISM. 



173 



the heart ; no promise of respectability to allure 
men. What could have made men Christians ? 
Some say it was a miracle ; that Peter's shadow 
and Paul's handkerchief cured the sick, and so the 
multitude said, "Christianity must needs be true/' 
0 my brethren, it was no such miracle ! Men saw 
the truth in Christianity ; they felt it in their 
hearts: they saw too the men that set it forth. — 
real men, sincere men, who preached Christianity 
with their lives and with their lips. Christianity was 
opposed. " It is atheism," said the priests, " sedi- 
tion ; the next generation will be bad men." Perse- 
cutions came. Christians shed willingly their blood. 
They had given their lives before as witnesses of 
the truth. Every martyr was a new apostle ; hun- 
dreds were baptized with his blood. It is in red 
that Christianity was published at Rome, and with 
that which does not soon fade out of the world. 
The gospel was a red-letter book. Humble men 
looked on when some father was torn by the victors 
from the arms of wife and child, and his head 
smote off. They talked with one another, these 
rude men in the market-place, while the public 
servants gathered up the dust spread there to ab- 
sorb the Christians' blood, and carried it off — an 
ass-load in baskets — to throw into the Tiber. 
61 Why is this ? " they asked. " He worshipped the 
God of the Xazarenes," was the reply. " But 



174 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



how ? " They followed home the widow and the 
orphan to their damp dwelling in some little filthy 
lane or in the garret of some huge castle of pov- 
erty, and saw how the Christians worshipped with 
brotherly love, in honor preferring one another. 
They went off and said, 44 Write me among the 
Christians ; it is a good tree that bears good 
fruit." Persecutions could not put down Chris- 
tianity ; that is the miracle. I don't know what 
powers the apostles had, and care little ; I do 
know that they spoke truth and lived it, and that 
is the reason that they prevailed as only speakers 
and livers of truth can prevail. 

Before long, half the Roman people were Chris- 
tians. Vain are laws and vain are swords against 
Christianity. Rome had conquered the world ; its 
greatest gain was Christianity, more than from the 
Greek philosophy. From Egypt, Rome brought 
sphinxes ; from Greece, letters, philosophy, arts ; 
from Judea, Christianity. Christianity was the 
better nature of man, — human goodness, human 
piety, human religion, working in a human way. 
Soon you see the effect of this new element in the 
laws of the world. The first Christians would not 
fight, nor serve idols, nor attend the bloody spec- 
tacles which formed the amusement of the people, 
nor commit the popular crimes. They practised 
active obedience to God's law, passive resistance 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM 175 

to man's sinful commands. They recorded their 
protests against the wickedness of the age, as 
Michael Angelo his against indifferent painting, 
by an example of a great life. There it is written 
at this day for the world's lesson. 

Soon you see the effect of Christianity extending 
from the cellar or the garret of the martyr's family 
to whole masses of men. The laws were affected ; 
precedents were more and more disregarded ; and 
equity took the place of absurd traditions. Fathers 
lost the power of tyranny over their sons ; milder 
laws were made to protect slaves; and Christianity 
proceeded to annihilate slavery. Then the condi- 
tion of women began to improve. Paul saw but 
half of Christianity ; witness all he says of slavery 
and of women. He added a great deal of error. 
But it was some merit for him to see that half; a 
greater merit to live it out when he saw it. Soon 
it began to be seen that man was more than the 
State ; that it was for him, not he for it ; and the 
new spirit of universal love took gradually the place 
of little patriotisms. It began to be seen that all 
men were equal before God ; that all deserved the 
same chance on earth ; that he was the greatest 
who did the most good ; that though men make 
laws, God only made righteousness and justice and 
truth, and that these only were men obliged to 
keep, say the laws what they will. Read Paul's 



176 CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 



Epistles to the Romans, Ephesians, Galatians, Co- 
lossians, Corinthians, and compare his words with 
the precepts that governed the Roman world. 
What a difference ! Let me note one thing, — the 
disposition to labor for another's good. Rome pro- 
duced great men ; her armies went to the ends of 
the earth ; the world trembled before her consuls. 
Rome went to Gaul, to Nubia, to Colchis, and to 
Thule itself, — for fame, for gold, to learn the re- 
ligion of a savage tribe, or to gather larger fish 
from the Euxine Sea ; but all Rome cannot fur- 
nish an example of one man going to teach another 
truth, to do a strange people good. Christianity 
began with that, — men that asked nothing for self, 
but gave all for man. There was the difference 
between the universal love of Christianity and the 
limited selfishness of the old civilization. This 
new spirit soon made itself visible in the Roman 
State. But, alas ! mankind was not far enough 
advanced to appreciate this ; as the Hebrews, es- 
caping out of Egypt, robbed their foes of gold and 
silver ornaments, sighed for the flesh-pots of their 
bondage, and, wishing to return, made a new image 
of their old idol and worshipped it, so did the 
world turn back, soon after the first welcome of 
Christianity, and sentenced themselves to remain 
in the wilderness, with the promised land of Chris- 
tianity before them still. After the death of the 



CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 177 

apostles, Christianity went back, Rome regained her 
hold, — not entirely, but in part, — and holds it to 
this day. You and I may see deeper in Chris- 
tianity than Paul saw. We may rise beyond his 
limitations ; for he is but the servant through whom 
we believe. But if we live, you and I, as faithful 
as he, true to truth as far as we see it, true in 
heart and true in life, not complying with the 
wrong that we know is wrong, shall not we too do 
a work, — a work that will not merely affect our- 
selves, but others too ? We are not called on to 
leave father and mother, to be shut up in prison, 
and by our death to bear witness to Christianity ; 
but here, in the place of our daily work, in the 
midst of our families, in the street, the shop, the 
farm, to bear witness by our life. This is always 
the more important martyrdom ; the living witness 
is more than the dying one. Let our Christianity be 
like that in Rome, — a great life lived out before 
men's eyes. That is the most eloquent of gospels, 
and that is in each man's power. God asks but 
two things of you and me ; that is, truth and right- 
eousness. With them we shall conquer a Rome 
for ourselves, with them move the world. We 
need not wait. There is no time like time pres- 
ent, no place like that of our daily work. 

1845. 

12 



XIII. 



LOW AIMS AXD LOFTY. 



After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven: 
and the frst voice which 1 heard was as it were of a trumpet 
talking with me; which said, Come up hither. — Rev. iv. i. 



HERE is a voice speaking out of heaven like 



J- a trumpet to every man, " Come up hither, 
for this is your destination, and vour welfare." 
Some hear it and heed the voice; others fear to 
listen. He that regards it has a lofty aim, and he 
that neglects it a low one. The life is like the aim, 
lofty or low ; and the end like the life. One man 
expects much of himself and finds it, another ex- 
pects little that is good or great or fair, and gets 
no more. It is with life as with agriculture : one 
man gains much that is good from a small surface, 
another little from a great surface, and that little 
poor. Into the great seed-field of time has God 
turned us all. We sow as we will, but reap as we 
sow, — much from much, little from little, nought 
from nothing. If you will ask, " Why did Oliver 
and Jane come out of the world with so little, 




LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



179 



when thev were both so well born?" the answer 
will be, " They had a low aim to start with ; they 
did not elevate their ideal as they went forward ; 
and at the last, when they were what they wished 
to become, it was found not worth the being." 
Most men aim to be as good as others about them ; 
to pursue the beaten track, right or wrong ; to 
favor the popular opinion, swear by the public 
religion, and live the public morals, committing 
only such sins as are respectable and decent. 
Many seemed satisfied to think they have made 
the world no worse ; yet this satisfaction is not 
left for all. Some do make it worse, though 
possibly no man ever lived who said to himself, 
" Go to now, I will make the world a worse place, 
and men and women more wretched for my living, 
so that my memory shall be cursed till the world 
end." It is not by deliberate purpose that men 
grow base, injure the world, or dwindle into little- 
ness. No man, knowing well that he came into the 
world an angel, ever wished seriously to creep out 
of it as a worm. It is by low aims that men dwarf 
their spirits and become worms. 

Elisha the prophet looked on Hazael the Syrian, 
and wept, for he saw the evil which Hazael would 
bring upon Isaael; but Hazael said, "Is thy ser- 
vant a dog that he should do this ? " If you and I 
could look with a prophet's eye on this young man 



180 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



or that young woman, we should often weep at 
seeing the good gifts and opportunities afforded 
them and the mean and little results they would 
achieve therewith. They would say, each of them, 
" It cannot be. Is thy servant a dog that he 
should neglect such opportunities ? " The an- 
swer would be, "No, he is not now that; but just 
such a dog will he make of himself to do these 
things." 

The state of society about us is such as tends to 
form a character of a certain medium goodness. 
If one sinks below that, he is not readily pardoned, 
unless very successful in his calling, or a man of 
extraordinary abilities, in which case the greatness 
of the person or the success makes atonement 
with the public for the littleness of the virtue. 
But while it favors this medium righteousness, it 
is quite unfavorable to the formation of a good 
Christian character ; I mean a really manly char- 
acter. Few dare to be wise or good or manly 
above the popular mark. Such is the awe men 
have of public opinion that few dare resist it. We 
in Boston exhibit the strange paradox of a public 
that has the greatest degree of civil liberty, the 
smallest respect for the officers that govern us, 
and at the same time the very least individual 
liberty, having the profoundest respect for public 
opinion, right or wrong. As citizens, we live in a 



LOW AIMS AXD LOFTY. 



181 



republic and have the greatest civil freedom, scorn- 
ing the name of subject ; but as men. as individuals, 
we live in a despotism, and must act, think, and 
live just as our masters bid, with little social free- 
dom and less individual freedom of soul. In public 
opinion there is little tolerance for any unusual 
virtue, unusual goodness or piety, even unusual 
wisdom. Self-denial for money, place, or fame vre 
appreciate ; for wisdom, goodness, usefulness in 
the highest sense, we neither understand nor al- 
low. Heroism of the flesh, and for the flesh, is 
at a premium in New England ; heroism of the 
soul, and for the soul, is little inquired for. The 
world covertly sets a bounty on compliance with 
its ways. Thus it does a service to the cause of 
progress and humanity ; for doubtless this rigor- 
ous intolerance of public opinion, like sharp dis- 
cipline in an army, restrains many that are below 
the average and keeps the stragglers from desert- 
ing or being lost. But it represses also the noblest 
spirits and degrades them to the dull level of the 
average virtue and intelligence. 

A voting man comes into life with loftv aims ; 
he has a great ideal of justice, usefulness, goodness. 
In trade or in the professions or any of the callings 
of life, he says : " Here are the great principles of 
justice ; I will keep them. I will live in harmony 
with Xature, doing justice to the body ; in harmony 



182 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



with man, doing justice to the mind and heart ; in 
harmony with God, doing justice also to the soul. 
I will know no tricks in trade ; I will give a day's 
wages for a day's work, and will take from the 
world no more than I give the world an equivalent 
for. If I get rich, it shall be by creating wealth, 
not robbing others of their creation. However 
much I receive from men, I will still keep them in 
my debt, by never receiving so much as I right- 
eously earn from them. I will not make fame or 
money by sin. If I see a wrong, I will first avoid 
it, and then tell of it that others may avoid it. If 
others do wrong, I will do right all the more. No 
ill-got gold shall be deposited to my credit. I 
will be successful and famous, if at all, by jus- 
tice, righteousness, Christianity, manliness. I will 
live in the world the example of a man brave and 
clean and Christian. I will put the Devil down, 
and live great and good. I have an ideal from the 
New Testament, from God ; it is a true ideal, 
therefore practical. I shall live it out, though it 
shame the Church and the State and the street like- 
wise. It can be done. There are great examples in 
life of just this sort of greatness. Not to mention 
the heroes, is not this man whose name is so great 
in the Church and on the street too, and that man 
to whom the nation looks up, — are not both true 
and noble men ? " 



LOW ALMS AND LOFTY. 



183 



Such a one begins his life scorning the tricks of 
trade, content with little so it be cleanly won and 
really his. An older man of no Christian ideal, of 
a low and vulgar aim, says, " My neighbor, you are 
very young, but will grow wiser as you grow old. 
Your head is full of notions. You are a visionary 
man, not to be trusted at present. You are yet too 
raw to make proper distinctions. Don't you know, 
my lad, that you will never be taken up by the 
world if you do so ? If one would succeed, he must 
take the world as it is, not as it is not. Give over 
that foolish whim of being better than others ; I 
have done so. Look over my inventory and see 
the result. If you would get along with the world, 
you must not be afraid of soiling your hands. Be- 
sides, it is not over-modest in you, youngster as 
you are, to set up for a reformer ; wait till you are 
sixty or seventy for that. All really valuable re- 
forms come from old men. I have lived a good 
while ; the world is well enough for me. And I 
have learned one maxim that is worth more than 
all your philosophy and ideals, worth more than 
your Christianity besides ; that is, to ' let well 
enough alone,' — to make the world serve me with- 
out trying to mend it." The young man wonders 
and doubts, finds it difficult to apply his truths to 
practice. It demands an austere self-denial of him. 
He hates to be singular, and loves to succeed. 



184 



LOW AIMS AXD LOFTY. 



He comes more into contact with the world, and 
finds few that share his ideas, fewer still that 
practise them, few even that tolerate them. His 
minister tells him that society is not based on 
moral ideas, nor ever will be ; that it is the part of 
philosophy and religion to teach us to bear the 
evils of the world, not to remove them, — that would 
be a revolution. I have myself heard such words 
uttered by the minister of a Christian church and 
with this application. Then he approaches the 
men he had considered as the models of men, — 
for he had heard them so commended. On close 
examination he finds often that they have become 
famous and successful only by compliance with the 
wickedness of the world : that they had either the 
average selfishness and more than the average 
skill, or the average skill and more than the aver- 
age selfishness, and so succeeded. Like the Phari- 
sees' cup, their reputations were clean without, but 
within filled with the results of robberv and in- 
justice ; their reputation brave, but their character 
base. So at a distance one looks at the city of 
Naples, and it seems a city of palaces and beautiful 
churches, — a dream of the sea copied into marble 
and placed on the land ; but as you enter, you find 
mean streets and filthy lanes, and the most squalid 
beggary creeping in the mud. You search long for 
the thing's that astonished vou with their beautv. 



LO W AIMS AND LOFTY. 



185 



Seen close at hand, you admire them as at first ; 
yes, with greater admiration, but wonder more that 
such things could rise out of such littleness and 
misery around. By such an experience our young 
man begins to think that he was mistaken ; that his 
neighbor and the minister and the famous man are 
right ; that if he wants to succeed he must not be 
very nice about the means ; that it costs a good 
deal to keep a conscience void of offence ; that it 
will not pay, — it costs more than it comes to ; that 
righteousness, goodness, and piety are worth a good 
deal in the New Testament and probably in heaven, 
but of little worth anywhere else ; that this one 
precept, " Take care of yourself, no matter how," 
is worth all the Sermons on the Mount, the Para- 
bles, and the Epistles, with his fine ideal into the 
bargain. " Who are you, young man," he says to 
himself, " to set up to reform the world ? Who are 
you that refuse compliance with what the world 
thinks right ? But one single little man, of no great 
ability and no renown, — when I compare myself 
with the world, I look contemptible. Besides, what 
is likely to come of all this ? I shall be like Job's 
wicked man, and have no name in the street." So 
he mends his fortune by marring his soul. He sets 
then a low ideal, takes things as they are, learns 
and practises the tricks of his trade ; counts that 
well enough which will serve his turn, and lets well 



186 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



enough alone. He follows this method the more 
zealously that he may retrieve the time he lost be- 
fore. He succeeds ; his desire is granted, but base- 
ness enters his soul. He dwindles in the qualities 
of a man, and becomes a union of the worldling 
and the hypocrite, a wolf that can bite and devour 
all the week and can howl and whine on Sunday. 
He hears no longer the trumpet from heaven, say- 
ing, " Come up hither ; " or hearing it, says, " I am 
too old to be caught thus. Sound away; the young- 
men will listen ; the old know better." 

Men do this, and turn away from their loftier 
notions, because they do not know the power of 
one man. We often overrate the force of major- 
ities, and vastly underrate the weight of an idea, of 
a man that has a single truth which the majority 
has not. He that has a great religious or moral 
truth which others have not, is not only stronger 
than ten men who have it not, but stronger than 
all such men. Ten strong-bodied men may com- 
bine and kill a giant ; if ten cannot, one hundred 
may ; but in greatness of character all the mean 
men on earth cannot equal one man who is noble. 
They fear him, not he them. He shall really suc- 
ceed before God, — not seem to succeed only before 
men. Let him be faithful to Truth, it will surely 
win its way, for Truth is the rule by which God 
governs the world, — the relations of things as they 



LOW AIMS AXD LOFTY. 



187 



are, not as they are not. We underrate the pow- 
ers of a single man, if right. In all the world there 
is nothing so powerful as an idea, if it be true. 
Men may pass away, nations go under in the storm 
of States, cities perish like a dewdrpp in the sand, 
great reputations dwindle at last into an empty 
name ; but through the ages, amid all the wasting 
of mountains, the decay of nations, the vanishing 
of cities, the idea lives on, and will live forever 
while God rules the affairs of men. Nothing is so 
imperishable as that ; let it once get spoken, it is 
sure to prevail. With that idea how powerful does 
the one man become ! 

It is curious to see in the history of the world 
how much has often been done by one single man 
who had a lofty aim. In the last three centuries a 
new element has been introduced into civilized life 
which is more powerful than the armies of Xerxes ; 
which changes the relation of nation to nation, of 
man to man ; and which has led mankind to devote 
many times the amount of its acquisition in science 
and literature to send comfort and happiness into 
millions of homes and to multiply the means of 
moral and religious influence a thousand-fold ; a 
power which defeats armies and will at last forbid 
armies to be, — I mean the invention of printing. 
In this present century, too, another element has 
been introduced which it is hoped will do more 



188 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



for us than the printing-press ; which binds a coun- 
try together as if it were a town ; unites nations 
like the wards of a city ; which does the drudgery of 
the world ; adds to the wealth, the comfort, and the 
welfare of mankind to a degree which no one can 
calculate ; and in connection with the other inven- 
tion silently effects the greatest revolutions in so- 
cial, national, and political affairs. I allude to the 
steam-engine. 1 Yet each of these was once but 
the idea of a single little man, who when he com- 
pared himself to the crowd that went through 
the streets of a city, seemed contemptible and not 
worthy to be thought of. Had the Prophet of 
Types and the Prophet of Steam been false to their 
mission, conformed with the world, the world's 
face had been quite other than now it is, you and 
I not what now we are. The welfare of millions 
may depend on one little man's doing his duty. 
But for the perseverance of one man, and that too 
for many years, in want and disgrace, reckoned 
visionary, a madman, almost a fool, how long would 
Europe have waited for the discovery of America ? 
But for the faithfulness of Luther, how long should 
we have toiled under the Egyptian yoke and in 
the Egyptian darkness, which the Roman Catholic 
Church had brought on the world ? 

1 Parker did not mention the telegraph. Morse's invention 
was introduced that year. — Ed. 



LOW ALMS AND LOFTY. 



189 



But for a few men that might be named in not 
many words, w T here had been the temperance re- 
form, where the movement at this day against 
slavery ? We look at some great and wide-spread 
evil, which goes successfully on and conquers man 
after man and State after State, — the sin of trade, 
of society, the tyranny of the strong over the weak, 
— and think it is to be removed by great and extra- 
ordinary measures. We look for something won- 
derful, and say, " Oh, if I could work a miracle, 
how soon should this evil be at an end ! " Perhaps 
not. He that is faithful in little would be faithful 
in all. He that begins in truth and righteous- 
ness, however humbly, will work a miracle at the 
last, whereat the nations shall pause and wonder. 
We often think it is by causes apparently great 
that the world is to be moved first, and next 
mended. Mankind was in a bad state at the com- 
mencement of the Roman Empire. All nations, 
faint from wars, surrendered, obedient to that 
haughty power whose armies trod the world un- 
der foot. Old philosophies were little heeded ; old 
forms of religion had become contemptible to the 
wise, though all the more zealously defended by 
the priest, as some capricious woman loves best her 
baboon when he is soonest to die, neglecting for 
him her babe new-born. The strong everywhere 
trod down the weak ; no great works of creative art 



190 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



were carved new out of first thought, for the relig- 
ious spirit seemed comparatively dead. Men never 
despair of the world ; but, " Who shall save us ? " was 
the question. Men looked to Augustus Caesar. He 
was the Emperor of Rome. The legions of the 
world were at his command. From the Baltic Sea 
to the Mountains of the Moon ; from the Sol way 
Frith to the Persian Gulf, — all stooped beneath his 
conquering eagles. The riches of the world adorned 
his new palace on the Aventine Hill at Rome. 
Men called him divine, and asked him to save the 
world. The best thing he did is told in seven 
words, — finding Rome brick, he left it marble. 
But while he was thus at work, with his wealth, his 
legions, his divinity, and his world, there was play- 
ing with chips in a carpenter's shop in Xazareth a 
little Jewish boy of a thoughtful turn, who in a 
few years was to make the Caesars ridiculous with 
their marble Rome, their legions, their wealth, 
their divinity, and their world. Silently, with one 
man, there begins a revolution that sweeps off like 
a deluge all traces of former devastation. The 
power of old religions fades ; their statues break ; 
their temples perish ; their priests expire. Rome 
changes her laws and her gods, and the name of 
the Jewish boy is more potent by far than that 
of Jupiter. The legions have gone, the marble 
perished; the fox burrows in the palace of the 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



191 



Caesars ; the owl at midnight makes solitariness 
more desolate on the spot where Augustus gath- 
ered the wealth, the wit, the wisdom of a world ; 
but the spirit of that Jewish boy goes to all the 
green islands of the Western main, and freshens 
our heart to-day. 

We often forget the power a single man has 
over the many. One man against the mass is a 
case that is often tried in the world and decided in 
favor of the one man. If Micaiah has the spirit 
of God, he prevails over the four hundred priests 
of Baal that have it not. Who has not seen in 
a great hall of this city the people assembled to 
hear some great statesman ? Before he comes, they 
stand there idle, impotent, looking foolish enough, 
as a body with no head, — clamorous, noisy, a for- 
lorn-looking mass of men, like a sail in a calm day, 
flapping this way and that. But the man comes, — 
the man they waited for. He speaks, and all is 
still. Men wave in his words as the group of trees 
to the wind that passes by. His words press into 
their hearts ; their thoughts are changed, and the 
great man looks down into that silent but speaking 
upturned sea of faces, and sees therein but his own 
image repeated in five thousand men. So have I 
seen upon the shore of some Atlantic bay a boat 
left dry by the retreating tide. Useless and ridicu- 
lous it seemed, a boat on the dry land. But in 



192 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



due time the waters came ; and held by its tether, 
the boat drifted here and there, with the swash- 
ing of the flood, till some man came down on 
the beach, stepped upon the bark, clapped up the 
mast, spread out the sail, put down the helm, cast 
off the tie ; and then as if a soul were in the boat, 
the wind swept her smoothly on. So it always 
is with the world and the world's men ; they are 
waiting, like Simeon, for their consolation. 

But perhaps you will say, " I am a humble man 
of little powers ; I can affect only myself." This 
is not so certain. Example is more moving than 
words, and this apparent paradox takes place, that 
this strongest force may be lodged in the humblest 
hands. He that moves himself aright has begun 
to move the world. " Give me whereon to stand," 
said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." 
Take it where you stand, and begin now. If a 
man have an high aim and live true to that, he will 
soon find his example produce an effect that he 
little dreamed of at first. Sometimes you see a 
woman of lofty aims applying her ideal to life, not 
with much talk at the corners of the street, but 
with humble perseverance, in the intellectual, 
moral, and religious education of her family. You 
see the effect then on herself, her husband, her 
children. Other women envy, but imitate. Soon 
her example has gone round the village. By and 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



193 



by her child has become a man, and men wonder 
whence has he this wisdom, this moral power, this 
soul of faith, that sustains him in trial. It was the 
soul of that mother, over whose grave the bee 
gathers honey in June, — it was the soul of that 
mother of lofty ideal that sustained him and made 
him a man. Few of us know the power of one man, 
however humble, if only right and true. How 
many a good man can trace back his goodness to a 
germ of piety awakened in his soul by some chance 
example, some word spoken by the wayside of his 
youth ! We distrust the power of an idea, the 
power of truth, the power of one high soul. 

Then too we forget God in our over-regard for 
men. We become cowards, and with the name 
Christian have nothing but that name. We forget 
that it is better to be certain that you are right be- 
fore the eyes of the all-judging God than it is to 
have the majority to keep in countenance your 
littleness of faith and nothingness of works. He 
that listens to this trumpet voice which says, 
" Come up hither," and, mindful of its high com- 
mand, fares on, shall not lack encouragement nor 
fail of his reward. A good work is its own recom- 
pense. A noble heart, a noble life, unstained and 
beautiful, are rewards that make wealth and fame 
ridiculous. These await you here. Set your aim 
to be a man and to live such in the world ; to make 

13 



194 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



your Christianity tell in your life, in bearing the 
crosses and doing the duties of life. You shall 
silently commence thereby a revolution in men's 
affairs that will go on with progressive force, and 
never end. Hope much of yourself, and you will 
achieve much. In your life remember your prayers, 
and in the heat of the world think on the dreams 
of your youth. Who knows what good shall be 
done by your fidelity ? This you know, that it is 
all God demands of you. Try this, not fearing 
man, but loving God, and in your own heart shall 
that trumpet speak with no uncertain sound, cheer- 
ing you on ; and at last shall a glad voice speak, 
" Thou hast been faithful in a few things, I will 
make thee ruler over many. Come up hither. Thou 
art my beloved son, and in thee am I well pleased." 

When Abraham, son of Terah, was a young man, 
he dwelt in Haran with his father, and with Nahor 
and Haran and their kindred. But Terah and his 
family worshipped an idol, a stock and a stone, 
offering sacrifices to it in a cave, and calling it 
God, the Lord ; for so their fathers had done. But 
the young heart of Abraham swelled within him 
when he saw it, and he said, " Nay, Father, an idol 
is nothing ; though thousands pray to it, it cannot 
help them." But Terah said, " The idol is a god, 
and thou art a fool, my son, a fool and a blas- 
phemer, to deny it. Worship as thy fathers have 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



195 



done, or the gods will curse thee." Abraham bowed 
his head, but went his own way, worshipping the 
true God. Then the people said, " Who is this 
youth that is wiser than his fathers, and would 
teach us the way of the Lord, and be holier in God's 
sight than we ? " And they called him Abram in 
derision ; " for," they said, " he would be the great 
father," and stoned him with stones, yet sparing his 
life. And Abraham, sorely wounded, said in his 
heart, " Is it not better to be mad among my 
brothers than to live whole and sound-minded alone 
and against them ? " And he answered and said, 
"Nay, that is the counsel of a fool and a blas- 
phemer ; " for the trumpet of the Lord sounded in 
his ears, and said, " Come up hither." So Abraham 
was true to his faith, and bowed not to the idols, 
but served mankind and the God of truth. Yea, 
he broke the idols in pieces ; and when his father 
sought his life, Abraham fled out of the land. But 
the duty was hard ; and he fell on his face, calling 
upon God in his extremity ; and the voice of God 
spoke in his heart, saying, " Fear not, Abraham, 
for I am with thee. Walk before me and be per- 
fect. Get thee out of thy country and thy father's 
house, and I will show thee a land to dwell in. 
Though thou passest over this river with only thy 
staff and thy scrip, hunted and forsaken, behold, 
I will make of thee a great nation, and in thee shall 



196 



LOW AIMS AND LOFTY. 



the people be blessed. Thou shalt be called Abra- 
ham, for thou shalt be the father of a multitude." 
And Abraham arose and went on. He served the 
Lord God of heaven and earth who speaks in the 
heart. His word passed into the people ; they said, 
44 Let us serve also the God of Abraham, for he is a 
righteous man and full of faith." He became the 
father of many nations, and his blessing rests now 
upon the earth. 



1845. 



4 



XIV. 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 

If we love one another, God dwelleih in us. — 1 John iv. 12. 

ALL finite things have their ultimate ground 
in God. He is their life, their being, the 
source of. all this river of beauty, this lake of life, 
this ocean of existence. Without him nothing 
could be. They are the effect, he the cause, — they 
transient and derivative, he ever the same and ab- 
solute. Follow back any of their branches here on 
earth, there in heaven, and you trace it at last to 
him as the parent trunk and centre of these woods 
of matter. The heavens are rooted in the soul of 
infinity. They change, and may fade and pass 
away as your breath dries up from a mirror where 
it was first congealed ; he is the same from ever- 
lasting to everlasting. Yet as there is a progress 
in Nature itself, shown by the rude things coming 
first, and later the more refined ; as there is a pro- 
gress in man, — so is there likewise a progress 
in man's notion or conception of the All-Father. 



198 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



Nature, like man, is a perpetual becoming. He is 
the everlasting Being, the Being absolute, perfect, 
infinite. As such, he fills the world of space ; its 
ground and cause are not in itself, but in him. T\ T e 
know in part the properties of matter, its history 
and its prophecy ; but it is not self-originated, not 
self-directed, not self-sustained. Its origin, direc- 
tion, preservation, we refer back to the infinite 
power, wisdom, love. Not that he is in one place 
or there at one time ; but, diffused in all space and 
through all time, he is immensity and eternity itself. 
Each finite atom, — the stone which the paver drove 
down in the streets yesterday, the white chrysan- 
themum which blooms in your window, the yellow 
flower which flaunts away its life beside a wild 
brook to-day, — if you follow it out, leads you 
back by successive steps of inference to the eter- 
nal cause. Philosophy, science, logic itself, show 
this, referring the finite back to the Infinite. To 
the scientific soul, God is behind every tree in the 
wood, underneath each brown leaf. He creates, 
and he sustains ; for preservation is but a continual 
creation. Great and little things, leaves, atoms of 
dust, trees, continents, planets, systems, the uni- 
verse of worlds, seem but a Jacob's ladder leading 
from us to him. This is fact, not poetry ; not reli- 
gion alone, but science as well. Once the theolo- 
gians thought it debasing the Deity to think of him 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



199 



as present in the little things, and therefore taught 
that he dwelt aside from the world ; heaven was his 
court, but heaven was high. He stood far from 
his world, overruling it by delegates, not by him- 
self ; so they taught that he seldom mingled in 
the world's affairs, was transiently present, and 
then by miracle alone. This is the thought of the 
Old Testament in its commoner parts. Xow 
science tells us that he is everywhere, and at all 
times ; that he is essentially present in each point 
of space, present by law and not by miracle ; is 
immanent, indwelling there, — the same power, wis- 
dom, love, which first created, sustaining still and 
guiding on his growing work. That theology saw 
God bat seldom, and then afar off ; this philosophy 
finds him here and now, ever present, ever active, 
blessed and blessing. The more law was extended, 
the more the old theology found its notions of Deity 
excluded from the world, for his presence was 
miracle, not law. Xow, the more we extend the 
boundaries of law, the more certainly do we see the 
footprints of our Father, and feel more warmly too 
his presence at our heart. Science beholds him 
not only when the thunder fills the sky, but in the 
ascending vapor, in the falling dew, in the bruiting 
wind and the all-invigorating sun, or the refresh- 
ing darkness of the night. Moses saw him trium- 
phantly present in the bush that burned and was 



200 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



not consumed. Science reveals him there when 
that bush is white with April flowers, or green with 
summer leaves, or varied 'neath the touches of the 
autumnal frost, or draped with winter's ice. Science 
shows us by fact the same power forever dwelling 
there. All ground therefore is holy ground ; every 
bush burns with God ; every point of space is filled 
up with Deity, in which he is present each moment 
of time. This is unavoidably so ; for the world of 
material things is not self-conscious, not free, — 
and therefore in all these things there is no disturb- 
ing will, no current adverse to the tranquil tide of 
the divine life. The sun cannot choose but light 
the world and hold each wandering planet by attrac- 
tion's golden leash. So no power is lost ; there is 
no conflict. Thus it is with all things. The frost 
must come in its season, doing its work without 
delay ; the wind must blow ; the lightning must 
with scorching fire and thunders speak. The acorn, 
feeling in her dim, unconscious breast the germ of 
future life, when the genial moisture and warmth 
of spring return, must open her bosom to put forth 
the aspiring shoot, and that must grow. All these 
things are perforce filled with the divine. They 
are ruled by law ; they obey, not that they will, but 
that they must. You come higher up among ani- 
mals, and you find the beginnings of consciousness, 
— yes, of self-consciousness, and so of freedom of 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



201 



will. This you find in the higher animals, — the 
dog, the elephant. By virtue of this we infuse our 
character into them and teach them. Still, the whole 
world of animals in the natural state seems wholly 
subject to instinct ; to .be ruled by law, much as 
the frost and sun, and with as little freedom. They 
therefore are not artists whose works record their 
own character and personal thoughts, but only 
tools with which the Father of us all carves out 
his thought. The slight degree of freedom they 
possess is not enough to allow of any disturbance 
in the force of Nature. The bee builds her fortress, 
— a copy, not of her own thought, but of that of 
the Author of all things ; so it is with the spider's 
web, with all the works of animals. All their 
works are revelations, not of themselves, but of the 
divine thought. In that quarter nothing is lost, 
there is no adverse will. They grow no wiser 
by experiment; 1 there is no sin, not even its 
possibility. 

We come to man. He is no more self-originated 
than they, nor self-sustained. His cause lies out 
of himself, not in himself. Man is not merely a 
body, but a soul none the less ; but that soul, like 

1 Parker had not then learned of the flood of light which later 
researches in natural history throw on the development of animals, 
showing that they do grow wiser by experiment, and that their in- 
telligence is capable of development. — Ed. 



202 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAX 



the envelope, is not its own cause. Man also is 
an effect ; God the cause. He is the ground of our 
being ; without him ever present, to preserve as to 
create, Ave could not be, — nor body, nor soul. As 
he fills each point of space, so he fills each point 
of spirit. The power we have, therefore, is not 
ours, but of him. But man, self-conscious man, 
is free, can choose, can obey his being's law or 
not obey. I do not mean that man has absolute 
freedom of will, but relative ; entire freedom be- 
longs, it seems to me, to God alone. Man has 
partial freedom, — freedom to use well or ill the 
power bestowed. He is conscious, — conscious of 
God and his high laws. Still, I think that there 
are limits to this freedom. No man has freedom 
wholly to mar and destroy his soul ; man can 
increase his freedom or contract it. The old theo- 
logical notion was that God was transiently pres- 
ent in man at his birth or his death, or in some 
high hour of visitation when he rose in rapture far 
above his common thought ; that God was present 
in man by miracle, and not by law, — occasionally 
present, then withdrawn. But it seems to me that 
he is not only ever present in each atom of space, 
but also ever present in the soul of man, both when 
we act in higher and lower things. For the Infinite 
must be everywhere, and where he is, be active. 
His, therefore, is all our strength, whether we obey 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



203 



or disobev. Yet there are times when we fully 
obey and keep his laws, when our will has become 
one with his. Our little atom moves in the plane 
of his infinite motion ; the dot is swimming with 
the tide of God. Then it may be truly said that 
he dwells with us, lives in us, acts by us, thinks 
through us, and wills by our means. There is 
then in us no adverse will, so no conflict, and 
therefore no loss. The true man, as pure as true, 
is the going forth of the Infinite, an incarnation 
of his Father, as much as the sun, — yea, far more, 
an incarnation in a higher mood, self-conscious, 
free. If the heavens declare Thy glory, how much 
more a heroic soul, a brave good man ! Take the 
human race as a whole, its history as a whole, 
estimate it all as the life of one man, and you 
must confess that mankind is inspired, — though 
not wholly so, not entirely informed and acted on 
by the Divine Spirit. 

Yet you must confess that God acts on man's 
unconsciousness ; that he is in history marshalling 
mankind on from age to age, and even out of their 
folly, caprice, passion, and sin, advancing the inter- 
ests of the whole race. Could we obtain a point 
high enough and a view wide and commanding, 
I doubt not that we should see that this wisdom 
which has guided the events of history was as per- 
fect as that which whirls the comets through the 



204 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



sky ; that the whole loss of mankind in its history 

— spite of all its wars and niisgovernnients, the sel- 
fishness of the strong, the cowardice of the little 

— amounted to no more than the oscillations of 
a planet to its onward sweep ; no more than 
the swinging of a child from side to side as he 
walks in the street, now and then stumbling, but 
rising and going forth once more. There is an 
involuntary residence of God in man, as such ; in 
you and me. This may be called the minimum 
of Deity in man, the smallest degree of divine 
presence, of heavenly indwelling. I know that 
is sometimes denied ; but I think that no one 
can wholly divest himself of it. Surely not ; that 
would sink him lower in being than the stone 
or sod, — into blank non-existence. So long as 
we live, that life is the all-sustaining power of 
Heaven present with us. Religious consciousness, 
religious sentiment, the affections, are the win- 
dows of the soul which look toward heaven. No 
man can wholly bar them up. So long as he 
lives, some little light shines through to warm the 
man. But as we are free and conscious, it lies 
within our power to enlarge this degree of divinity 
within us, to become partakers of him more and 
more ; or we may diminish this degree of divinity, 
become less and less, for a time. The dot may 
strive to swim against the tide, or cross its line 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



205 



on any angle, great or small ; and then the power 
God lends us is acting against itself, against him 
who lent. Yet how small that action compared 
with God ! We are all capable of this communion 
with him, yet not all in an equal degree here 
and now } some are by the nature born with them 
capable of a greater measure of receipt from him, 
others with less. Yet I do not think the great 
difference we see in men at this day depends so 
much upon the primal gift as on the use men make 
of it. All men are born with holy gifts, few with 
holy genius. There are many that shut them- 
selves out from that divine light, and live only 
by pale, reflected fires, whom Heaven has gifted 
with many talents. Some dim the dawnings of 
Heaven at all their four entrances by a life of low- 
ness and sensuality. They place their enjoyment 
in their appetites, and these will never feed the 
man. These cases are rare. Others by selfish- 
ness, by an exclusive counselling with prudence 
or worldly thrift, by a sluggish refusal even to 
look up to the great Source of righteousness and 
truth and good, turn away from their proper ac- 
tions and lose the power of right, — men of low 
aims, content with one good action in their life, 
content with seeming good, content with appear- 
ances, not seeking perfection ; men that sell them- 
selves to things as they are, instead of giving 



206 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



themselves away to truth and righteousness, to 
goodness and to God. The world is full of such 
men, — men who cease to grow, who are content 
to be little, who despair of heroism in themselves, 
and mock at brave endeavors in all other men, 
calling that madness or fanaticism. Men that are 
mired in worldliness are subdued to what they 
wallow in. Others you see who perennially take 
more and more of the divine into their life and 
soul ; they become more and more inspired. At first 
these periods of inspiration are but moments, and 
those rare. These persons are transiently divine, 
— occasional Christians ; but they walk in the 
light that falls on them, and journey forth to 
clearer light and far more plenteous. They look 
for truth, and welcome what thereof they see. 
Each particle received greatens their love and their 
receptive power. They ask for righteousness ; and 
when it comes, by its light they see a thousand 
wrongs, which never seemed wrongs before. By 
each action conscience gets a clearer sight, and 
they live moral truth the more ; the more it is 
seen, the more it is lived. They learn to live 
with kind affections, bearing this world's ill, and 
striving to conquer it with good. Each step taken 
here prepares them for a better and a higher 
step, and so they grow. For the grass there is 
the nightly dew, the daily sun, the constant air, 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



207 



the solid, all-supporting ground ; and sustained, 
enlightened, watered, and fed thereby, the little 
plant receives accessions of new strength, new 
loveliness, — grows and fills up the measure of 
its life. So the true man, faithful to his little, 
receives continual influx from on high; supported 
by the ground of God, refreshed by his air, warmed 
by his sun, and watered by continual dews of grace 
divine, he grows, forever becoming more and more. 
How many men have we all seen of this sort ! — 
men of no great powers at first, easily distanced 
by abler men, men better born ; but men of most 
unshaken truth. They seemed to have little will ; 
they were so balanced in favor of righteousness 
and truth, they seemed to need no will. How they 
grew, — grew in righteousness, religion, conscience, 
mind, and heart, till they far surpassed men who 
had at first towered over their heads like giants, 
and looked down contemptuous ! 

I have seen a man with large powers, exceeding 
great, but proud, rebellious, violent, and self-willed, 
— a snaky-minded man, forever in a coil, or mov- 
ing with a wriggling gait from thought to thought. 
When he looked up, reverently asking for Truth, 
she came. He was not content with Truth; it 
must be Truth and I. He asked of Truth, he asked 
of Righteousness and Love, " How high will you 
place me ? What power give me over my fellows ? 



208 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN, 



What name among men ? " Truth, who buys not 
nor sells, laid her fingers on her lips, and silently 
withdrew. Then the man stood there alone; no, 
not stood, and not alone, — he drifted, floated on, 
ever tossed In a sea of troubles; seeking com- 
panionship of multitudes, and yet nowhere at 
home, now and then tearfully looking back to the 
hour when truth and righteousness assured him 
of God's incoming upon the pure and holy soul. 
Long, long those angels hover over his head, and 
cry, " Return, return!" But self-will says, "I'll 
not return ! " and so the man grows less and less, 
and like that ancient worm crawls with prone face 
and feeds upon the dust, counting it life to shed 
a poison glitter in the sun, and with discordant 
thrust to hiss at the passers-by, or lurking in the 
grass, with calumnious tooth to bite at a good man's 
heel. He has not the income of Heaven, — feed- 
ing, watering, lighting, and life-giving to his soul. 
It is the income of lowness and meanness which 
he asks and takes, — cunning, not wisdom. Poor 
man ! God would baptize his soul with spirit and 
with fire, — he will not. So the world baptizes his 
body with its mud and slime, and the poor de- 
ceived one says, " Aha ! I am famous, great, and 
clean : stand back, ye saints, for I am holier than 
thou." I have seen others too, starting with 
little gifts, content with daily duties, — not seeking 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



209 



fame nor mightiness ; asking only their own de- 
serts of men ; asking of Heaven truth, righteous- 
ness, and love, goodness and piety ; when they 
received a little, they made it more. Their light 
was doubly brilliant, when they made it life. They 
seemed to have small stock of wisdom, small force 
or power; but like the fabled widow whom Elias 
blessed, their little stock of oil and flour held out 
continually ; and while great men failed of want 
and perished, they had enough and to spare. So 
have I seen a gardener using the simple light of 
day which fell on rocks and wood and field, and 
out of that light painting his garden with roses, 
lilies, violets, — flowers of every hue, — until men 
wondered how all that beauty could come of simple 
sunbeams, and as they wondered found a fragrance 
there even yet more marvellous. Yet so it was : 
the sun no brighter shone upon the gardener's 
field than on the rocks, the lichens, and the high- 
way dust ; but in the gardener found a sunny mind, 
and so brought beauty forth. How often do you 
see a woman — for she is commonly perhaps 
more true to Heaven than ambitious and intriguing 
man — with no great gifts, perhaps, yet certain 
as an oracle in all that relates to righteousness 
and truth ! She does little reasoning ; having 
much reason, she is sunlight itself. In difficult 

matters, the path of duty is plain as the high- 

14 



210 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



way, and men forget their reasoning, and ask 
of her, "Where lies the way?" It is not her 
own strength she works by, but the supernatural 
strength of Heaven. She will outsee the craftiest 
man, and outwit the subtlest ; for she looks only 
for the truth. How much of the divine will dwells 
with her ! Such an one is inspired ; if always true, 
why, permanently inspired, — not always rising to 
that lofty state in which we see new truth, but 
always dwelling on that table-land, that clear moun- 
tain height, in which duty appears as it is, and 
truth old and familiar dwells with us. In such an 
one there is no conflict between desire and duty, 
between what we know is right and what we mean 
to do. So in her action there is no loss, — no 
oscillation even, — but motion beautiful, and that 
right onward too. She has outgrown the stum- 
bling gait of infancy, the devious course of wanton 
childhood, and faces straight on. Such an one is 
at one with God, and has no need to go to heaven, 
is in heaven now ; yet becoming daily more and 
greater, with such there is a perpetual accession 
of the Deity. No strength goes out to gain the 
victory ; for all is income of its own accord. 1 

i This is from Thoreau's " Sympathy " in " The Dial," July, 
1840, vol. i. p. 71. 

" No strength went out to gain him victory, 
Where all was income of its own accord." 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



211 



It seems to me that we have, so to say, chan- 
nels of communication with our Father in heaven. 
First, we use faithfully our reason, and we get 
at truth ; the more faithfully we try, the more we 
get ; and getting more, we love the more, and so 
enlarge the mind. If we think truth, so far God 
dwelleth in us. Second, we use faithfully conscience 
and see the eternally right, justice, moral truth ; 
we are not dazzled looking on that light ; we look 
and are healed of a blindness, healed by the fiery 
serpent from within us, not that which stung us 
long ago. The more we see, the more we love, and 
live the more. He that decides for moral truth, 
God dwelleth also in him, and he in God. Third, 
we use faithfully the affections, and we gain love. 
Selfishness, violence, all the armor of defence that 
foolish men gird themselves withal, fall from us, 
and with the power of love we feel that we can 
overcome the world. It transfigures us, till we 
shine in spirit ; and common life, the daily house- 
hold cares, and the familiar face of man and wo- 
man seem beautiful as in an angel's home. Fourth, 
we use faithfully the religious sentiment, and gain 
religion, goodness, and peace, that confiding trust 
in the Eternal One which men call faith. Doubt and 
fear have gone, all partial malice, treachery, and 
dread. Daily duty is enough for us, and daily sor- 
rows, as once they were, we have turned to daily joys. 



212 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAX. 



The Balaams, men sent to crush us by their words, 
come up with blessings on their lips, and, marvel- 
ling, return. It was an angel who stayed the beast 
we rode, and turned us back to better things. We 
have the fourfold income of the divine upon us. 
It comes as truth, as righteousness, as love, as 
faith. If we think truly, God dwells in us, if we 
dwell aright, if we truly love and fully trust. So 
the scale of perfections is complete ; truth is no 
longer cold, nor righteousness unlovely, nor love 
partial, nor faith foolish ; but each borrows con- 
tinually from all the others, and so they pass from 
emptiness to perfection, and the man becomes 
greater and more from year to year. He loses 
nothing ; there is in him no conflict. God's law 
acts through him as through the rocks and trees ; 
they are one with God, not lost ; this is to be con- 
sciously at one with him. The man has not lost 
the human, only put on the divine ; in all human 
relations he is more than ever the father, brother, 
husband, friend. Like Moses coming from the 
mountain, he knows not, cares not, how his face 
shall shine, but speaks his oracle and does his 
work. In this fourfold way, the Spirit descends 
on him ; the divine image is renewed in him. He 
feels his kinship to the Infinite ; Christ is born 
within his breast ; and he transforms himself into 
the same image that lies mirrored in the clear 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN. 



213 



spirit's deepest depths, — the image in which he 
created man transfigured thus. Good and evil come, 
as Moses and Elias, to bear him witness and to 
wait on him, while far below, the world is lost in 
sleep, and cannot watch one hour. Thus he grows 
continually, not asking how ; rooted in the celestial 
soil, he grows toward heaven ; religion, conscience, 
heart, and soul become daily greater, and he gets 
nearer to man and to his God. How little seem 
the sorrows of this world, the loss of friends, how- 
ever dear ! " Our Father took them home," we 
say. u His will is mine ; let his will have its way." 
How little seems the world's applause, and how 
poor its honors are ! Will such an one lie, deceive, 
and cheat for gold and honor ; will he stoop his 
high aims and be mean and vulgar, seeking for 
applause, and still the voice of Heaven on his quiv- 
ering lip, fearing to be wise above the crowd ? Will 
he silence the chanting of God's angel choirs within 
his heart, and listen to the wretched quacking of 
the public geese ? It cannot be. Will such an one 
be less fit for the common duties of life, for its 
rudest and its hardest works ? Could Christ be 
less the carpenter, or less the fisherman, because 
the Saviour too, the perfect man, and one with 
God ? Nay, while others have toiled the whole night 
and yet caught nothing, he shall fill his bursting 
nets. 



214 



GOVS INCOME TO MAX. 



How far we live from him ; how near we mav be ! 
What if each one of us sought to become a partaker 
of the divinity, to have this truth, this righteous- 
ness, this love, and to be full of trust in him ? What 
if you and I. each of us, thought as much of this as 
some are thinking just now of the election of a few 
weak men to a conspicuous place ? What if we set 
our feet forward toward that ? How great should 
we soon become ; how happy our daily life ! How 
would all things help us ! How contented we should 
be with the right ; how patiently, anxiously, should 
we strive after it : how successfully" achieve it ! 
What a home would yours be, my brother, if you 
sought that, bravely tried to be inspired of God ! 
How you would rise above the spires of the 
churches, and having drank that heavenly spring, 
come here no more to quaff at my poor shallow 
stream! Why give away the heavenly Spirit, which 
would fill these temple-hearts of ours with perfect 
beauty and continual hymns ? Why not gather the 
wandering sunbeams of life into lilies, roses, violets, 
fragrant flowers of manliness ? Alas ! we know not 
yet the meaning of a man ; we take mean counsel of 
the flesh, and put up with little men. God walks in 
the garden, ready to bless his new-born child. Eve 
opens her bosom to the whispering snake whose 
venomous speech has poisoned her ear ; she de- 
vours her apple ; Eden has gone, and gone the 



GOD'S INCOME TO MAN 



215 



tree of life. She walks on ground that is cursed, 
amid thorns and thistles ; behind her waves the 
fiery sword of public shame ; saddened Adam fol- 
lows, both cast out. 

Why do we follow mean and little men ? There 
stands the world's hero, — manlier than men, and 
therefore so divine. Into his soul was the per- 
petual income of God, as truth, as righteousness, 
as love, and all-absorbing faith. The same truth 
and righteousness and love and all-absorbing faith 
wait there for you, — yea, more, for manhood is not 
yet complete, and man is a perpetual becoming, 
dawning into a perfect day, and Christ but a 
prophecy of more. All the Deity of the Godhead 
watches over you ; on the walls of your heart will 
he write his eternal thought continually, as truth, 
righteousness, love, and faith come in and dwell. 
Yea, come, 0 Father, come and dwell with us, that 
we dwindle not, but rooted in thee, watered and fed 
and lighted too by thee, may grow forever in thy 
sight, becoming more and more ! 



1846 



XV. 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



The inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. — 



SERE is a general belief in the human race 



that men have communication with God and 
receive inspiration from him. This belief appears 
to be spontaneous, and seems to belong to the 
whole race. You find it in the earliest ages and 
the latest ; in mythology, history, philosophy. It 
lies at the foundation of prayer ; for if I cannot 
penetrate to the actual presence of God and re- 
ceive something from him, then prayer is of no 
avail, but is an operation purely subjective, limited 
to my own personality. 

It is intimately connected with the notion of 
Providence. For if God directs the course of af- 
fairs of men, nations, or the world, — if he mingles 
his thought with the mind of man, his justice with 
the conscience of men, his beauty with their taste, 
his love with their affection, his fulness with their 
soul, — it must be chiefly by means of inspiration. 



Job xxxii. 8. 




THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 217 



The notions of prophecy, oracles, divination, com- 
mon in most countries even now, all refer back 
to this for their origin. The subject is one much 
talked of, one of great importance, but one on 
which much confusion of thought prevails. 

According to the common doctrine which is 
taught in the popular theology of our churches, in- 
spiration is a rare thing, extraordinary and mi- 
raculous. Man is passive in the reception of it 
and in the manifestation thereof, — only a pipe 
on which the Spirit of God makes music. He can 
do nothing to merit or receive it ; it depends 
purely on God, and so the communication of inspi- 
ration seems purely an act of beneficence on his 
part. He might give it as well to Judas as to 
Jesus, at one time as another time, in sleep or in 
waking, in play or study, or in hunger. The 
common notion is that inspiration is the direct and 
miraculous communication of knowledge to a man 
by God. The matter communicated is called a 
revelation, and is supposed to be quite distinct 
from information acquired in any other way. In- 
spiration is a miracle ; all laws of matter and of 
mind are set aside ; it is occasional ; the inspired 
man is not always in the state of inspiration. It 
is rare, limited to a very few persons in the whole 
mass. It is perfect ; that is, the knowledge given, 
the revelation, is of pure truth, — so that the in- 



218 THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 

spired man speaks the truth, and nothing but the 
truth, on all matters. Nothing true can be added 
to it. The test of inspiration is not the truth 
of the thing revealed, — for that would imply that 
man uninspired was the judge of inspiration, — 
but some miracle wrought by an inspired man as 
the seal of his mission. It is granted to man only 
in matters pertaining to religion and theology, — 
not at all in matters of science, history, and poli- 
tics, except so far as religion is concerned. Inspi- 
ration is thought to be limited to the Jews and 
Christians, but it is a rare gift even to them ; for 
among the Jews, only Moses, Joshua, and the 
prophets had it, with the writers of the Old Testa- 
ment, — perhaps fifty or a hundred in all ; and 
among the Christians, only Christ, the Apostles 
and writers of the New Testament, with the early 
preachers, — making some fifty or sixty, perhaps. 
That is the Protestant notion of inspiration, that 
it is limited to about one hundred or two hundred 
souls in the whole world. They suppose, too, that 
it is now ended ; that the New Testament is not 
only the word of God, but his last word ; and u the 
faith once delivered to the saints " means the faith 
once for all, and God has no more to say. Accord- 
ingly, inspiration has ceased and will not return ; 
there has been no inspiration for eighteen hun- 
dred vears. In this view, it is thought right and 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 219 



Christian to speak of the Bible as an inspired 
book, a revelation : of the religious doctrines thereof 
as revealed religion ; to speak of religion as rest- 
ing on the authority of men, — of Paul and Peter 
and the rest, as inspired men ; that in the Bible 
there is not the smallest error, neither of doctrine 
nor in men ; that Christianity is to be taught on the 
authority of inspired men, —infallible men, who 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and 
wrought miracles as proof of their divine com- 
mission. A lecture is delivered once in three years 
at Cambridge to defend this view. 

All this, it seems to me, is erroneous and full 
of danger. It has for its foundation a false the- 
ology, which also rests on a false philosophy, 
a false view of man, his nature, capacity, and 
destination; a false vieiv of God, his character 
and design, and of the relation between man and 
God. Let us see if we cannot arrive at notions 
a little more philosophical and comforting than 
the popular. 

For convenience' sake, we may divide the uni- 
verse of actual things into three parts, — God, 
man, and the material world. Let us see what 
relation the three bear to one another. God — the 
being of perfect power, perfect wisdom, perfect 
love — is of course the Cause and Giver of all 
things, material or spiritual, — the ultimate of all 



220 THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 

other power. All the powers of matter and of 
mind of course are originally derived from him, 
and continually supplied. That is the general 
relation of God to man and Nature. 

Now, what in special is the relation of the ma- 
terial world to God ? God is its cause, as creator ; 
he created matter out of himself. But does his 
work stop there ? Surely not. Nature can no 
more continue to be without God than it could 
begin to be. It exists only by his will, his act ; 
he must have been present in every part of Nature 
to create it at first ; and to sustain it, as much as 
at first to create it. He is universally present in 
Nature in every part of space. A grain of dust can- 
not exist without the power of God there in that 
grain of dust. Look at this a little more ; take 
your point of departure from that particle of sand. 
It is a finite thing, — not self-created, not self- 
controlled, nor self-sustained. It must rest on the 
Infinite as its Author, Controller, Preserver. So 
you are led from the finite to the Infinite. Begin 
at the other end of the scale, — with God. The 
Infinite Being must be infinitely present — present 
with all his power, wisdom, love — in each spot ; 
so that when you begin with the Infinite and fol- 
low that, you find the Infinite extending to all 
finite things, and therefore in this grain of sand. 
God, therefore, is in all matter. The Strength of 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 221 



all is strong ; the Loveliness of all is beautiful ; the 
Motion of all is moving ; the Being of all exists. 
You come to the conclusion that God inspires the 
material world with existence, force, order, beauty, 
peace ; all its capacity is filled with that divine 
spirit. In the world of mineral and vegetable 
substances, there is no finite will ; all the action 
there is the will of God. The lines marked out 
by the planets circling round the sun are ellipses 
drawn by God. The shapes of the crystals or the 
rocks, or of the flowers of the field, represent di- 
rectly his thought. He is resident in the lily of 
the valley, in the diamond on a ring, in the far 
star which awav off the other side of the world 
sends its cold sparkle down to us, in the star 
Antares, visible in Scorpio now-a-nights, which 
so remarkably changes its size. God, then, is 
present in Xature with all his attributes, — not 
transiently there to create, but permanently to 
preserve. Here he is immanent. But he tran- 
scends all this. The forms of action here are not 
indispensable. In another world the perfect form 
of vegetables may be angular and rectilinear, as 
here circular ; and the minerals may be circular, 
as here angular. Xature depends on him, not he 
on it. God is Nature's centre and Nature's force ; 
but God is his own centre and his own limit. This 
is an important distinction. 



222 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



Now, look at the relation of man to Xature. 
Nature is the sphere of the body ; we depend on 
that for all the means of life. Cut off the supplies, 
the body dies. The body has certain wants which 
Nature continually supplies. We have internal in- 
stincts, external limbs as their tools ; and these 
two mediate between the want within and the 
supply without, — satisfy the demand. When these 
conditions of the body are fulfilled, then we have 
health, strength, beauty. The conditions are not 
perfectly fulfilled ; and so the physical condition 
of the body is what we see, — sick men, weak men, 
ugly men. I think all this is plain. First, that 
Nature depends on God, and he is present there 
continually and with all of himself ; second, that 
man's body depends directly on Nature, and re- 
ceives supplies therefrom. 

Now, look at the relation of man to God, viewing 
man also as a spirit ; that is, as mind, conscience, 
affection, soul. Take the nature of a man as the 
point of departure. My soul is not self-created, not 
self-controlled in whole, though surely in part, not 
self-sustained. It is finite, yet reaching after the 
Infinite ; no finite thing will content it. Show me 
what is beautiful ; I want something yet more lovely. 
Give me wisdom, — all I can ask to-day ; to-morrow 
it is like the multiplication-table and ABC. Make 
me to-morrow as religious as I pray to be to-day, 



TL.E doctrine of inspiration. 223 



and next day I shall ask forgiveness of God for 
what now seem my virtues. No finite attainment 
contents me ; I must have the actual infinity of 
God, and that alone sufficeth me. The more I grow 
in mind, conscience, affections, and soul, the more 
I am conscious of this dependence. The thinking 
is mine, but the thought is not my own. I cannot 
make a truth. I cannot make a truth false, nor a 
falsehood truth. The right which conscience points 
to, is not of me, but before me, beforetime of God. 
Have I invented justice, right, love, faith ? No more 
than my eye invented light and my body sleep. 
Whence come the ideas of eternity, truth, right, love 
of God ? From myself ? Not at all. I am finite ; 
they infinite. From men ? They also are finite. 
Nay, from God himself. Just as the air, water, 
food, that sustain my flesh, come from all sur- 
rounding Nature, and that from God, so the ideal 
sentiment which sustains my soul comes from the 
all-surrounding God. Take the Infinite as a point 
of departure. God is perfect power, wisdom, love. 
The Infinite must be everywhere in each part of 
spirit as of space ; in each soul present with all his 
power, wisdom, love. The manifestation of these 
must be proportionate to the degree and mode of 
being of the particular soul in which he dwells. 
Starting, therefore, from the finite or the Infinite, 
you come equally to the conclusion that the soul of 



224 THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



man is an abiding-place of God ; that we are more 
or less partakers of his divinity and active subjects 
of his inspiration. All knowledge therefore is in- 
spiration ; all information is revelation. Such is 
the conclusion of philosophy. 

Lay philosophy aside awhile, — the inductive 
method, starting from the finite particulars ; the 
deductive method, starting from an intuition. Take 
simple spiritual sensation, and pious souls will tell 
you that they feel the presence of their God, — feel 
that the truth they welcome is not of them, but of 
God ; that it is he who irradiates their minds and 
hearts. Nay, they will often go farther, and, over- 
shadowed by the power of the Infinite, will deny 
that they have any agency of their own ; it is all 
God's work. That testimony may not be very 
valuable when taken alone, but it shows which 
way the spiritual current sets. I should distrust 
any philosophy which seemed to contradict natural 
instincts. It is plain that God must be everywhere 
in space, else there is a part of space where there 
is no God. He must also be everywhere present 
in spirit, else there must be a part of spirit where 
there is no God. Where he is, he must be active, 
— active in some mode suited to the powers of 
the individual soul. All this follows from the ideal 
of God as the Infinite. Gravitation cannot act 
where it does not exist, nor be where it does 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



225 



not act ; for its existence is its activity. So is it 
with God. 

Now, look a moment at the condition and laws of 
inspiration. There is a certain inspiration that is 
involuntary. This we have as animals, beings, as 
mere existences. This we cannot rid ourselves of 
if we would. Man must be active. "Where there 
is no action, there is no possibility of inspiration. 
God will not inspire us as stones. But as activ- 
ity of the body properly directed brings us into 
harmonious relations with the material world, so 
activity of soul properly directed brings us equally 
into harmonious relations with the spiritual world, 
with God. As the body has wants, instincts, limits, 
so the soul has wants, instincts, powers. As a 
proper use of the body, obtaining from Xature 
more material things, gives health, strength, and 
beauty, so a proper use of the soul gives us wis- 
dom, goodness, piety, the beauty of holiness, by the 
acquisition of spiritual things from God. All this 
seems very plain. As I open my eye and receive 
light from an outward source ; as I exercise the eye, 
and learn to see by its light, — so when I open my 
mind, I discover truth from a source which is not 
myself. As I use my mind, I learn to walk by that 
truth and be blessed and bless others, helping 
them to find more truth. The reception of this 
spiritual good is inspiration. But you see it is 

15 



226 THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION, 

orderly, regular, never a miracle. Now, the plant 
and the rock have no power to violate the laws of 
their natures, — no power, therefore, to oppose the 
laws of God. Therefore they are always perfect 
after their kind, and so receive from God all that 
they can hold. The measure of their inspiration 
is full. But I have this power ; I may use well or 
abuse the gifts I possess, so I may increase or 
diminish my inspiration. I have power to abuse 
my senses or my soul. 

Let me take one form of inspiration, the intel- 
lectual. When I receive truth, I receive the thought 
of God ; when I receive this from another, I receive 
the thought of God indirectly and am indirectly 
inspired, — inspired through the medium of another 
mind. When I discover the truth myself, then I 
receive it straightway from God, then I am in- 
spired directly, immediately. I may have been 
helped to it by the visible things in which I study 
anatomy, astronomy, botany ; or without these 
visible things I may have learned it, as I study the 
universal laws of mind and matter. But then the 
difference is only in form ; it is the mind of God 
that I have. So I might take another form of in- 
spiration, — the affectional, love. Inspiration you 
will see, then, is not confined to matters of religion ; 
it is coextensive with human concerns. It was a 
wise notion which prompted the old Hebrew writer 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 227 



to say that God inspired Bezaleel and Aholiab to 
do their handiwork, not less than Moses to make 
laws. The mind is capable of intellectual inspira- 
tion, the conscience of moral, the heart of affec- 
tion al ; and a man is inspired just so far as he has 
the character of God in him, and just so far as he 
thinks truth, decides for justice and right, and feels 
love. To have love is to have God in the affections : 
as to have justice is to have God in the conscience. 
Now 3 this inspiration on a man's part may be con- 
stant or occasional, as a. man transiently or per- 
manently keeps the law of his soul. You have 
seen men who caught glimpses of truth and no 
more. You might say they were occasionally in- 
spired. Other men. who always seem pervaded by 
wisdom, goodness, religion, sentiment, you might 
call permanently inspired. In either case you per- 
ceive the change is not on God's part, but on man's. 
God is constant. So then there can be but one 
kind of inspiration, as there is only one kind of 
truth, of thought ; and but one mode of inspiration, 
the direct communication with God. On God's 
part it would seem there could be but one form 
thereof ; that is. the imparting of himself, which is 
a creation in whole or in part, either through other 
minds or not. But there may be many forms in 
which it manifests itself, ■ — in the saint, poet, phi- 
losopher, statesman, artist, and the like. You may 



228 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



conceive of it as showing itself in four principal 
forms, — as it affects the mind or the affections, the 
conscience or the religious powers. There can be but 
one test of inspiration, and that is truth, — truth 
to the mind, conscience, affections, or religious sen- 
timents. Thus the inspired mind must see truth, 
and just so far as it is inspired ; the inspired affec- 
tion must love, the inspired conscience decide 
justly, the inspired soul trust God. An outward 
miracle, if it were possible, would no more prove 
that its worker was inspired with truth or justice, 
love or faith, than an outward miracle would prove 
a gunner would always hit his mark. The hitting 
of the mark is proof of his power. If a man re- 
veals to me a new truth, a higher sentiment, a 
completer justice, a purer sense of religion, I ask 
no outward sign of the excellence he offers me ; 
the excellence is more than the sign or form. I 
know some men say, You must believe the truths 
of Christianity before you can be a Christian ; but 
you must not believe them because they are truths, 
but because the Church says so, say the Roman Cath- 
olics ; or because miracles were wrought to attest 
them, say the Unitarians. 1 I am amazed at this. 

Now, there will be different degrees of inspira- 
tion. Perfect inspiration would be the reception 

1 This is hardly true of Unitarians now, though it was true 
when Parker wrote. — Ed. 



THE DOC TRINE OF INSPIRATION. 229 

of the whole of the Godhead, would be becoming 
equal with God ; for nothing less than the Infinite 
can contain infinity. Now, it is possible for a man 
actually to have much higher degrees of inspiration 
than I can understand or comprehend, or even ap- 
prehend ; yet it is not possible for any man to be 
perfectly inspired. There are some things a man 
may know as well as God, — that is, that one and one 
make two ; but all finite creatures would be unable 
to contain the whole mind of God. Hence the 
Christian notion, that Jesus was equal to God, is 
necessary to sustain the thought that his inspira- 
tion was complete and perfect. But there will be 
various degrees of inspiration, and they will depend 
not on God directly, but on the capacity of the 
person who receives. Thus a man of little mind, 
conscience, affection, religious sentiment, cannot 
receive so much truth, justice, love, faith, from 
God as one of larger powers. True, he may be 
just as full, as a thimble may be just as full as 
the Baltic Sea, but not hold so much. 

Now, we are born with different abilities and so 
capable of different degrees of inspiration, depend- 
ing on our quantity of being. But we increase or 
diminish this power by obedience or disobedience 
to the laws of our nature ; for it is true that any 
faculty grows by suitable exercise. So it often hap- 
pens that one born with small abilities, using them 



230 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



well, re-forms his organization, and gets greater 
power than his brother more favored by birth. 
He thus becomes capable of more inspiration, and 
receives accordingly. But it depends also on the 
quantity of obedience. A man born with the 
greatest powers we call a genius. If lie uses them 
well, then he becomes capable of the highest de- 
gree of inspiration possible for a man. I look on 
Jesus of Nazareth as a man of a great moral and 
religious genius. There are various degrees of 
inspiration, from Christ down to the humblest 
man, the wickedest sinner. No man is wholly 
without it ; then he would perish utterly. From 
the smallest grain of dust from the filthiest kennel, 
the all-creating, all-sustaining God has not with- 
drawn. There are various forms of manifesta- 
tion. One has the inspiration for common trades 
of life, one for ruling a nation, one for eloquence, 
one for piety ; this for morals, that for art, — each 
man according to his several ability. A wise man, 
a good man, a holy man, is inspired to moral wis- 
dom, goodness, holiness. Still, there is only one 
kind of inspiration, only one mode of inspiration, 
only one test of inspiration. 

I look on the whole outward world as inspired, 
as the dwelling-place of God, — not God, but his 
shadow, so to say, cast in matter and made mani- 
fest to the senses, his perpetual work ; for I cannot 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 231 



think that God was present at the creation of the 
world, and then withdrew, but is always here. 
Hence the world becomes to me not only a won- 
der and a beauty, but a most holy thing. It is 
God's thought which I read in the sublime lan- 
guage of chemistry, geology, astronomy, geometry ; 
which I hear in the little nursery-song as it were 
of the flowers and the grass, of the evening wind, 
and the song of the birds. I can sympathize with 
the boy who, when he first saw a beautiful flower, 
fell on his face in prayer and silent psalms. Then, 
too, each little thing becomes attractive. I feel a 
certain relationship between myself and the earth 
I stand on ; yes, and each little thing upon it. For 
me God is in the sun, in every bush. I hear his 
voice in the low undertone of the sea, in the wild 
bee's hum. I can say to the worm, Thou art my 
mother or my sister, and be pleased with the family 
tie which links me on one side with the angels in 
heaven and on the other with the clod of dirt under 
my feet. Then, too, I find a certain holiness 
everywhere. All ground is holy ground ; each 
particular star is bright with God ; each blade 
of grass rustles with his breath ; and I find he looks 
at me with a thousand eves that never close. I 
commune with him everywhere. In a picture gal- 
lery I find the past thoughts and feelings of the 
artist who put them there ; but in the ground, the 



232 THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 

air, the heavens, I find God's thought to-day. He 
speaks with me afresh, as to Adam, in a world 
which is continually new and full of him. 

See in this the goodness of God, and the hope 
which remains for you and me. Each created thing 
has its joy and its delight. Must it not be so with 
the Creator ? Must not his existence be one con- 
tinual joy and an infinite delight ? What can it be 
but this, — to create joy and delight, welfare, holi- 
ness, in the finite worlds ? Tell me that God made 
man to glorify and to praise him ; ay, but he made 
man, made Christ and the archangels, that they 
might all be blessed. Finite creatures, we depend 
on outward things to give us joy, blessed by re- 
ceiving ; he depends only on himself, blessed by the 
gift. Our joy is to receive his inspiration, whole and 
complete in this body, as health and strength and 
beauty ; in the soul, as wisdom, goodness, piety, love, 
— in beauty of holiness. But his joy must be to 
impart all this ; for he delights not only in his own 
infinite well-being, but in the finite welfare of you 
and me, — yes, of the humblest worm that crawls 
the earth. If you love your child or friend, you 
aim to communicate your joys to him. God is the 
fountain, ever full, which runs over and fills the 
world with loveliness, with life, with conscious 
bliss. See how he provides for the material world ! 
Look at this green summer, at this wide earth, this 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 233 



mighty sea, all full of blessed life ; look at the 
heavens, where each particular star is a gem of 
beauty, and the whole world makes one world 
of eternal loveliness, and all this but the habita- 
tion and furniture of immortal souls, into whom 
God pours himself, to be made manifest in higher 
forms of higher life. 

Then, what a glorious spectacle it is ! How 
much nobler seems the earthly globe when viewed 
as God's material dwelling-place, its every part his 
work, the sign of his life, the proof of his power, 
the emblem of his love ! Look on the soul of man, 
your own reason, conscience, affections, faith ; how 
much more dignified seems now this spiritual soul 
when you find man thus the child of God, the 
vessel into which the inspiration of the Almighty 
waits to flow ! See how that eternal Provider pro- 
vides for mankind ! He provides for all, not by 
miracle, but by law ; for at the beginning he fore- 
saw the wants of men as he sees them now. Xotice 
the laws and conditions of inspiration, — that God 
withholds not his spirit from the lowest soul ; that 
he withdraws not wholly from the most sinful, but 
continues still to bless. See what capacity we have 
to receive inspiration from him ! the more we have, 
the more we hunger, and hungering more, are fed 
more full. Prayer, what is it ? But an effort, first, 
to put our soul in the true condition to receive from 



234 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 



him, in its most active state ; and, second, the sally- 
ing forth into the world of truth, justice, love. Sure, 
this is prayer, — the soul's lawful activity, self- 
consciousness of communion with God. God rules 
the world, not by miracle, but law ; not by external 
force, by thunders and lightnings on Sinai's top, 
but by imparting his inspiration to mankind, — 
now as truth of science, philosophy, theology, art, 
letters ; now as sentiment, justice, righteousness, 
and universal love. Truth is God's word and 
its own proof ; love is God's sentiment and its 
own sanction. He that has them is just so far 
inspired. Of this inspiration all are capable ; yes, 
all receive less or more. Education of the mind, 
heart, conscience, or religious sentiment best en- 
larges our power to receive yet more of the divine 
fulness. He that is born a genius is capable of 
much ; if I of less, then will not I complain, — for 
if my cup be full, it is all that I can ask. But 
by use I shall become capable of more, and then 
of more, and so of greater excellence and of more 
joyful life. 

Tell me not that inspiration is a rare thing. Is 
God's power rare in Nature ? Nay, there is no 
spot where he dwells not and forever. Has he 
forsaken the soul of man, content to live in mat- 
ter only, and reveal himself in the varying form 
of yonder star, — not in new life, in poet, prophet, 



THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION. 235 

artist ? To me that thought seems cold, Tin-Chris- 
tian, akin to atheism. I know it is not true. No ; 
in the wickedest man there is a spark of God, 
which is vet the light of all his being. God 
inspires the race, each man according to his 
soul's ability, and so provides for all. What hope 
is here for mankind ! See how the race gets bet- 
ter, wiser, higher, every year, spite of the follies 
of men ! See what a future there is for man ! — 
not a future to be dreamed of, but worked for, 
prayed for, and nobly won. See what hope there 
is for us ! Are you a wise man and a good man, 
but fearing lest base and wicked men shall pre- 
vail ? Fear no more ; the Infinite is here ; his 
counsel shall prevail, and all men shall be blessed. 
For the thing first in the counsel of God must ever 
be to impart his spirit to all his sons. 

1848. 



THE END. 



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